Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Underground was cold with everyone gone, and Flowey hated it.

He hated a lot of things, so many that he liked to list them all and wallow in the satisfaction of really hating something, loathing it and resenting it and holding it in complete contempt. Not the healthiest of hobbies, perhaps, but it wasn't as if he had a wide range of choices, or any range at all. He was a flower. Flowers did not typically do things except perhaps photosynthesise and get feasted on by bees or butterflies or other dainty, pretty things that had no business near something like Flowey. He hated them too, he decided.

But he also wished they'd actually come down once in a while so he could hate them up close. Nothing came down anymore. He hated that too. He really, really hated that.

A thin breeze ruffled his petals and he barely felt it. Infused with magic and the remnants of Determination he might be, but his sensations were limited. That didn't stop him from knowing it was cold, though. Cold was a state of mind, he'd decided quite early on. The weather could be cold, people could be cold, but real coldness went further than that.

It seeped into corners and shadows, frosting over the craggy rocks in the heart of the mountain, stilling all sound in the ruins. He couldn't hear the chattering of Froggits and the whining of Whimsuns anymore, nor the sliding and creaking of old traps, or the skittering of spiders. There wasn't anything left here, only the damp, stale air and this golden patch of flowers. He hated it.

Time had felt weird since everyone had left, so he couldn't say when he first started to hear it. He was so used to not hearing anything that it didn't even seem to register in his not-ears: a faint scraping, like hooves against gravel, growing louder and louder until he couldn't convince himself he was imagining it anymore. It was almost like someone was coming, but that was ridiculous: he wasn’t that lucky. Life wasn’t that kind to him. If anything, life and he and a mutually harmful ‘let’s see how much I can take from you’ type of relationship.

So, if he'd had a heart, it would have been pounding with nervousness when he raised his head. He was trembling and terrified - terrified he'd find nothing in front of him – but Frisk was there all the same. Flowey didn’t move, didn’t say a thing. Frisk smiled softly and took their backpack off, sitting down in front of him.

“What are you doing here?” Flowey asked, immediately guarded, though it was difficult to be guarded against someone like Frisk. Everything about them looked soft (so unlike him): soft around the edges, softness in their hair, softness in the deft gestures their hands made that he couldn’t understand. That was alright: he didn’t know why, but he always knew what Frisk wanted to say. It didn’t matter if they couldn’t speak, or if he couldn’t understand their language.

I’m here for you.

“Go away, Frisk.” He turned his head, petals flopping down again so he couldn’t see them. But he could hear the shuffling as they moved closer to him. Frisk’s hands were soft too.

“Go away.”

They didn’t sign anything, didn’t even react. Their arms were warm, just as warm as they had been before. Flowey hated it, he ha-…he didn’t know.

“Go back home, Frisk.”

Come with me, then.

“What?” He looked up and Frisk backed away to sit down comfortably. They seemed to mean what they’d said. “Are you kidding me? How stupid can you get, Frisk?”

It’s not stupid, though. You should come back with me. You’d like it.

Flowey thought he could work with this, more than with the crippling uncertainty that had gripped him since he’d seen this unbelievable kid. He laughed, the sound dripping in condescension and disbelief at Frisk’s stupidity.

“Yeah, okay, let me just go back and play house with everyone I tried to kill. Brilliant idea: now I know why those idiots keep you around. Guess I shouldn’t have expected much more from a pacifist like you, huh?” He spat the words out, his face twisting into something horrible.

Frisk looked at him despairingly (resentfully, too: he knew there had to be resentment in there) and leant back on their arms, looking up. Flowey felt satisfied: they were going to give up on him too – finally – so he just had to wait a bit longer and he could be alone again. Because that was exactly what he wanted. Sure, why not. In any case, being alone had to be preferable to living with an idiot and a menagerie of monsters who might remember how he’d tried to kill them all.

It’s nice, above ground, Frisk ‘said’.

No, no, okay, look: Frisk wasn’t supposed to do this. This wasn’t what Flowey had counted on. Frisk was supposed to get discouraged and leave, it was that simple.

I mean, I still have to go to school and everything but it’s not as bad as it was before. And my friends are with me now. Alphys has a nice new laboratory and Sans works there, for a given value of ‘work’. Alphys gets really into her work, so Undyne has to keep dragging her back to their apartment. Or she just sits watching anime rather than working, I’m not really sure. It’s sort of a 50/50 split. Either way, a lot of dragging happens, but neither seems to mind. Undyne’s having the time of her life too. She’s tried a bunch of different things, but right now she’s a personal trainer. She says she wants to be a gym teacher next, though.

“Frisk, why are you telling me this? I’m not going back with you, come on!”

Papyrus is so much fun, too! We hang out a lot. He doesn’t really have a job, but he’s so involved in the community, and everyone loves him. Oh, and he started cooking lessons and we can actually eat his food now! I can’t tell you how much of a relief that is. Obviously he and Sans share a place, but they’re over at ours practically all the time. We’re almost neighbours anyway, so it’s fine, and Mum likes the company.

Panic gripped Flowey. “Frisk, don’t: I don’t want to hear any more! Just shut up!”

Frisk looked at him and they were still smiling infuriatingly softly, like they understood everything about him, like they could possibly understand what he felt. But there was no way they actually could because if they did then they wouldn’t be about to tell him more.

Mum’s brilliant. I didn’t realise before, but…I feel like I’ve actually got a home now. She’s really involved in the school, always volunteering to bake things or come with us on school trips or teach us about the Underground. She’s pretty much always cooking too, what with how much Undyne eats, and how everyone stops by unexpectedly. Always better to have food ready just in case, right? Even Asgore comes round at least once a week.

“Frisk, stop…”

For someone who’d Spared every monster in the Underground, Frisk was apparently in no mood for mercy. They didn’t even look at Flowey, and he was grateful for it. He didn’t want them to see his face.

So everything’s pretty great! It’s so much fun, and it’s never boring. Even Mettaton and Napstablook have got signed up with a music label. Oh, they still come over sometimes, though, and then things get really wild. And Sans and Mum are really close now, and Alphys and Undyne are even closer and Mum keeps having to stop them from smooching too much in front of me. I don’t really think it’s gross, but complaining that they’re too mushy really seems to bring everyone together, so I don’t mind. But Sans and Mum get just as mushy when they think we’re not looking, so they’re just being unfair.

Flowey was shuddering. It shouldn’t have been possible – he was a flower, for crying out loud – but the leaves and petals in his line of vision were shaking as he bowed his head. Shaking and blurring and he couldn’t have looked up if Frisk had asked him to. They didn’t: they just hugged him.

You should come with me. I know…I know you think it’s hopeless, because you don’t have a soul, but…you should come. I’m taking you with me.

Frisk was being selfish, and Flowey should have called them out on it. He knew he should have because it would have made everything easier if he’d slipped back into the easy cover of anger and arrogance that he wore so well. It wasn’t even a façade, so it should have been easy, but…

But.

Very gently, as if to make sure they didn’t dislodge any petals (not that that could happen), Frisk moved away from him again. He wondered how long they’d wait. He wasn’t going to say anything, so they could wait all day if that was what Frisk wanted. Might as well have a stare-off while they were at it.

But apparently Frisk wasn’t having any of that, and the next thing Flowey knew, he was being uprooted (gently), Frisk’s hands curling down into the earth and picking him up by the roots.

“W-what are you doing?! Frisk, stop! I’m serious, stop, this isn’t funny, just- ! Frisk, is that a flower pot. Are you putting me in a- No, no: I refuse, I’m not going to be put in a stupid flower pot like a potted plant, what is wrong with you?! FRISK!”

Frisk clapped their hands together and brushed their jeans down of leftover earth, looking decidedly pleased with themself. Flowey scowled.

“Frisk, I’m giving you one warning: take me out.”

It’s a nice pot. Terracotta’s a good colour on you.

“I don’t care about the colour! I want out: take me out!”

Pouting dramatically, Frisk sighed. No. We’re going home now.

“No, no, no, no – you’re going home, I am staying here, I am definitely staying here!”

“They’re all going to want to kill me! They have every right to want me dead! Everyone, even…” Flowey bit his lip, stopping any more inconvenient displays of weakness. Frisk didn’t have to know about that. Except that Frisk didn’t even look surprised.

Nobody remembers except me, you know. Well, I mean, sometimes I think Sans might, but I don’t have any proof. So I’m probably the only one. I’ll just say you’re someone who got left behind because you’re a flower, and you can live with us.

They were picking him up now, walking to the winding path that led up to the surface, and Flowey couldn’t open his mouth to protest. He hated the cold of the Underground. He hated the silence, the regrets hanging in the air like bloated fruit flies in the hottest parts of the Core. He hated it all, but he didn’t hate Frisk (somehow) and he couldn’t resist this. He didn’t want more regrets to add to the swarm.

Besides, he couldn’t have done anything even if he’d wanted too, since he was now an actual potted plant.

He rapidly began to regret his decision when they reached outside. The light was blinding to him, but even that discomfort wasn’t enough to make him turn his eyes away from the view. It was like nothing he’d seen in such a long time: land stretching on for miles, pockets of miniature houses and buildings bubbling up into cities, and the sky above it all, marked by greyish clouds but so blue, just like he remembered…

He froze in place when a familiar voice called out Frisk’s name. Toriel came over to them, worry written all over her face.

“My child, what were you doing? You were gone for so long, I could not help but worry for you,” she said, wrapping a clearly unnecessary scarf around Frisk’s neck. Frisk didn’t seem to mind, but with Flowey in their hands they couldn’t sign so they just held him out. In that moment Flowey hated them for it.

“Oh my, what is this? It is not a normal flower, I think: did this poor monster get left behind?” Her hands were fluttering anxiously around the pot, as if she wasn’t sure what to do. Flowey could relate: he couldn’t even lift his head.

But Frisk had things under control. They lifted his pot higher.

Say hello, Flowey.

At a complete loss for anything else to do, his mind a mess of fear and memories, Flowey looked up into his mother’s eyes.

“Howdy!” he said in a weak voice. “I’m Flowey.”

Chapter Text

“If you tell them anything, I’ll kill you,” Flowey whispered at Frisk for the seventh time. Typically once should have been enough when death threats were involved, but this was Frisk and they were just nodding along happily as if it didn’t even concern them. Flowey was seriously beginning to regret ever agreeing to leave the Underground. Except he hadn’t agreed, of course. That was all Frisk’s fault too. So really, everything led back to them. Flowey scowled.

The walk down the mountain was uncomfortable, jolting and stop-start as Toriel led Frisk by the hand. She was coddling the kid, Flowey noticed, and it annoyed him. Frisk didn’t need that. There were better things to protect them from than every dip in the path, come on. And sure, perhaps he was just being irritable, but he had a right to be irritable, thank you very much, especially when his eyes were being assaulted with new sights everywhere he looked. When he could practically feel the bitterness rising up through him every time he looked at Toriel.

She hadn’t even recognised him from when he’d tried to trick Frisk the first time. She didn’t remember him at all, and that made it all the more frustrating that he’d been hoping, wishing that she might. He’d been an idiot for that. He was the one who’d been stupid, practically shivering with fear, waiting to see any flicker of memory in her eyes when all she had had to say was some shtick about how terrible it must have been for him all alone, how lonely he must have been, and gosh, it all made him feel sick.

Okay, so maybe he had gone beyond bitter at this point. He scowled harder.

The gravelly, frosted path flattened out into a proper road eventually, and the three of them stopped in a car park. Toriel’s was the only one there and the wooden posts lining the parking spaces were practically rotted away. They got in, and Flowey noticed that Toriel didn’t even start the car until Frisk was all strapped in and ready with Flowey’s pot in their lap. There she went again with the coddling. He was going to hate it here.

He became even more convinced of that fact as they drove down into the city (Frisk occasionally poking him in the petal in a silent protest against his scowl, to which he just scowled harder). Everything was weird and unnecessary. It was nothing like he remembered (not that he remembered much, or that he’d exactly been taking in the scenery at the time) and as they drove through streets lined with buildings higher than even those in Hotland, flashier and louder than anything he’d seen before, he couldn’t help but realise his scowl was slipping. It was too much all at once: too colourful even with snow shovelled to the sides of roads, too busy even from the safety of the car window. He was embarrassingly relieved when they finally pulled into the garage of a pretty house in a residential area.

“How are you feeling?” Toriel asked as she opened the passenger door and waited for Frisk to hop out. She’d tried to start up a conversation with him more than once on the ride back, and he’d valiantly evaded every attempt.

“Carsick,” Flowey spat.

“Oh, what a terrible shame,” she said in a voice that was just the slightest bit dry. Flowey wondered if she was fed up with him yet. Wouldn’t that just be grand?

Frisk smiled apologetically at Toriel but they still didn’t glare or seem to have lost patience with him. He’d have to try harder.

‘Do you have to be difficult?’ they thought, with not quite enough exasperation to satisfy him. But they’d never been able to understand him the same way he could understand them, and he didn’t want Toriel to overhear, so he just kept scowling. He was getting good at it, he thought.

“I do not mind you bringing such a small friend to live with us, Frisk,” Toriel said in a decidedly warmer voice than before as they went inside, “but I do wish you might have given me some warning. I do not know how to care for flower monsters. Now I think on it, I do not believe I have ever even met one.”

Frisk toed off their shoes and put Flowey down gently on the hall table. They began to sign to Toriel and Flowey couldn’t understand a single gesture, but clearly Frisk was feeling benevolent and they thought to him at the same time.

‘He doesn’t take much work, really. Well, his personality does, but he doesn’t really need feeding, and he can sleep in my room, and I’ll take care of him, I promise!’ They beamed.

“Don’t make me sound like some high-maintenance pet!”

The beam changed to a remorseless grin and Toriel seemed happier with that, like Frisk was giving her permission to not be flawlessly polite.

“Well! If you are sure, I will not stop you,” she said, smiling. “Perhaps he would like to go on a walk with us later, to grow used to the overland?” She took one look at Flowey’s expression and said hurriedly, “Or perhaps not. Let me know if you need anything, my child.”

Frisk leaned into Toriel’s paw – almost as big as their head – to have their hair ruffled, then picked up Flowey and went up the stairs.

The house was offensively welcoming, Flowey thought. The walls were dotted with photos in pretty little frames, and the wallpaper, furniture, even the air (smelling faintly of butterscotch, because of course it was) were all harmless and soft at the edges. Just like Frisk. Cuddly, homely, friendly; all things that needed reciprocating and that he could never give back. Not that he’d want to. It was suffocating.

Frisk’s room was different, somehow. Not too big, with just enough space for a single bed, desk, wardrobe and chest of drawers, and the décor was a lot less…fuzzy, somehow. Less coddling? Whatever it was, he felt better here. There was clutter here.

He still wanted to laugh when he saw a potted ficus in the corner. “Looking to add me to the collection?”

‘Nah: I only put the bad ones in the corner. The really bad ones go in the wardrobe.’ They put him on the desk, though, on top of a forgotten pile of notebooks. All bark and no bite.

“Cute. Listen, Frisk: you can't tell them. If you tell them, I'll kill you. I’m not going through that again, and if they find out then they’ll want to kill me. So you can’t tell them, or I’m seriously going to kill you.”

‘Nah. You wouldn’t do that.’ They were sitting on the bed, swinging their legs happily.

There was probably no chance they’d actually let it slip, but Flowey wasn’t taking chances.  “I don’t care how confident you are, just know that I will seriously kill you, you and everyone you love if you so much as breathe a word.”

‘I don’t think you can kill me, though.’

“Oh, come off it: I’ve started every reset in this body, completely powerless, and I still brought the entire underground to its knees every time. Don’t think you can beat me.” His voice had gone gravelly, scraping the back of the throat he didn’t have, the one he could only feel.

‘I beat you before.’

“And you think you’ll be lucky again?”

‘I might be. But either way, I don’t think you want to kill me, or them. Do you?’

Flowey spat out a laugh. “If it looks like fun, then I’ll do it. And if you tell them – if they start to hunt me down – it’ll be more fun than you could possibly imagine.” His face was shifting again – he could feel it. It was like clay, melting and hardening into place instantaneously.

‘You can’t just kill everyone here, you know.’ They were looking out of the window to the dusty-white garden, pulling a leg up to their chest. ‘This isn’t the underground anymore. But it’s not like I’m going to tell them anyway. I want you to be happy here.’

“Seriously, how dumb are you?” He could feel his mouth stretching, gaping open in a sick grin. “You want me to be happy here, surrounded by chumps who are either going to hate me or literally want me dead?”

‘Having friends is nice. Do you remember? I think you do, otherwise I’m not sure you’d have come here with me.’

“Yeah, way to conveniently forget that you literally dragged me here.” Why couldn’t they just get angry at him? Or scared, or intimidated or something?!

 ‘But you want to be happy here too, don’t you? You want to have fun, without killing us. You-’

“Shut up, Frisk!”

If he had had lungs, he thought he might be breathing heavily, so he was terrifyingly relieved he didn’t have any. For the first time, Frisk looked taken aback. For a few moments, all that passed between them was the ticking of the alarm clock, perched on a set of bookshelves above the bed.

Flowey felt his face shift back. “Why do you want me here? I don’t care what you want for me, I want to know why you want me here, what you think you’ll get out of this.”

Frisk looked at him, presumably thinking, and then their gaze dropped to their knees. They brushed a strand of hair behind an ear. They’d cut it shorter, Flowey noticed.

‘I don’t know.’

He glared at them incredulously. “You’re not serious. Tell me you had a reason. Renew what little faith I had in your intelligence.”

Frisk stuck a tongue out at him. ‘I don’t know. I just wanted to. Maybe I just wanted you around to remind me that life could be worse. I could be a houseplant.’

“Now you’re just being petty.”

Frisk smiled again, wide and infectious. This was getting impossible, Flowey decided. He couldn’t understand this kid: no matter what he did, he couldn’t understand them at all. They were so weird. He relaxed.

‘Aren’t you confused by everything about life up here, anyway? Is that why you’re being more annoying than usual?’

“I’m always this annoying, Frisk: better get used to it,” he retorted smugly. They’d chosen him, now they could deal with him. “And come on: I read those human history books too, I know the deal. I’m not going to get freaked out by some little car or whatever.”

Frisk was giggling and doing a bad job of hiding it. Flowey’s smugness faded a little (but not much: no dumb kid was going to take his smugness from him).

“What? What are you laughing at?”

‘Nothing.’ They bit their lip. ‘Just happy you’ve perked up.’

“You’re so full of it,” he grumbled, and they shrugged, like they were agreeing just to make him happy. They probably were. Conflict-avoidant extraordinaire and all.

Before Flowey could let rip with another comment that was going to be expertly scathing and witty, he felt the shudder of the front door closing and the muffled sound of voices coming from downstairs. In a shockingly low blow from the world at large (but one he really should have seen coming) he recognised the voices, and they were not voices he’d been planning on dealing with for at least another few days. Frisk looked sheepish.

“That’s the skeletons, isn’t it,” he said flatly.

‘Might be.’

“Including the bag of bones who’d gladly rip me apart if he happens to remember. And you’re not sure he doesn’t.”

‘That does seem to be the case.’ Below them, a deep, gruff voice joined the others. ‘Oh look: Asgore’s here too! Isn’t that nice? I hope you like tea.’

Flowey had no hands, so he smashed his head into the table and dragged that down his face instead. “Frisk. Take me out of the pot and put me in the garden. I’m going free.”

‘No, no, I’m not doing that.’

“Let me go, Frisk!”

‘Weren’t you the one just threatening to kill us all? What happened to that confidence?’

“I have had no time to plan, I’ve basically got no power here, and I can’t even move without you: I am not meeting them!”

‘Oh, shush.’ They smiled broadly, spreading their arms out. ‘Everyone will lov- tolerate you. Probably. You just have to have self-confidence and be yourself!’

“Don’t wink at me when I’m despairing, Frisk.”

‘Ahh, don’t be so grumpy.’ They hopped off the bed and straightened his stem gently, plumping up his petals at the same time as if that wasn’t incredibly invasive of his personal space. ‘It’s going to be fine, I promise! Sans and I talk a lot, and he’d have told me by now if he remembered something.’

Flowey couldn’t look away when what amounted to his head was cupped between Frisk’s hands, so he grimaced instead.

‘Ready to go and say hi? Or howdy in your case, I guess.’

This was humiliating. It was humiliating and so frustrating that Flowey wanted to tear his eyes out or something just as violent, but he still had to say it. “Promise me something first.”

Frisk was already picking him up, but they cocked their head curiously and paused for him.

“Don’t…don’t do anything unnecessary. I don’t need you to force me to make nice. I don’t need you to push me into picture-perfect, happy little friendships. I’m nasty and cruel and I’m not changing. I can’t feel anything, anything, so don’t act like…if you try hard enough for me, I’d be able to. Because I can’t. Get that through your head, and then I’ll meet them.” Show me you’re not just looking to change me to feel better about yourself, he didn’t say because he wasn’t that needy, wasn’t that honest.

‘I promise.’ There wasn’t any hesitation or anything. Frisk just had their mile-long stare on, intense in all the wrong ways and totally focussed on him. ‘I wasn’t really going to do that anyway. It’s more fun if you’re just you.’

Flowey thought he might be able to believe that.

Predictably, the living room was just as benignly comforting as the rest of the house when Frisk carried Flowey down there: fuzzy carpets, deep armchairs, and even a cuckoo clock for some reason. It also happened to be the teensiest bit packed: it clearly hadn’t been built to room boss monsters, but Toriel had done her best. She smiled warmly at them, already pouring out another cup of tea.

The others were slightly less warm, and Flowey felt it immediately. There wasn’t any of the gasping and reaching for the nearest weapon that he’d been expecting, but the three of them hesitated, just for a moment. Just short enough that they could pretend they hadn’t, and then Asgore sipped his tea, the absurdly cheery one’s smile was back, and the walking pain in Flowey’s neck had relaxed. No danger here, then, apparently. Trust Frisk to be right for once.

“hey kid. who’s your friend? tori didn’t say we’d be…plantertaining.”

“I think you will find I did,” Toriel said, hiding a smile. If she was trying not to encourage that sort of behaviour, Flowey thought it was already a lost cause. Sans didn’t have a remorseful bone in his body.

Frisk, being the creature of love and mercy that they were, decided to put Flowey down on the coffee table, in the middle of everyone, before accepting a cup of tea from Toriel and sitting on one of the couches next to Sans. Their legs swung back and forth while they blew on the tea, and Flowey resented every swing.

‘Not going to do your introduction?’ they asked without signing. Flowey ignored them pointedly, glaring daggers at the coffee table. Curse its stupid, reflective surface.

The lull in conversation barely had a chance to get awkward before Papyrus leapt in to save the day.

“I KNOW YOU MUST BE SPEECHLESS TO BE IN THE GREAT PAPYRUS’ PRESENCE, BUT FEAR NOT!”

Oh, he hadn’t changed a bit.

“WE WOULD ALL LOVE TO BE YOUR FRIENDS! WE CAN GO ON STROLLS, DO PUZZLES, AND ENGAGE IN FUN, WHOLESOME HUMAN ACTIVITIES, LIKE QUILTING OR COUNTRY DAN- …OKAY, MAYBE NOT COUNTRY DANCING. BUT THERE ARE MANY OTHER CHOICES!”

“Sounds enthralling,” Flowey said in a voice he hoped was acid enough to get through to even that numbskull.

It clearly wasn’t, and Papyrus beamed, clapping his hands together with a clacking sound. “EXCELLENT! WHAT’S YOUR NAME, FLOWER MONSTER?”

“…Flowey.”

Sans’ perpetual grin got wider. “you’re a flower called flowey? imaginative. perhaps even jasminspired.”

“SANS!”

‘That was awful,’ Frisk signed to him cheerfully.

“they can’t all be winners, kid. gotta try them anyway.”

“I for one think it’s a lovely name,” Asgore said in a deep, rumbling voice.

“Yes, I am sure you do,” Toriel said, not as unkindly as she might have. “Will you have some tea, Flowey? Or can you not drink?”

“I’m pretty sure I can’t, on account of the lack of digestive system.”

“DON’T BE SO DEFEATIST: THAT HASN’T STOPPED US!” Papyrus demonstrated by taking another sip of tea. The couch beneath him stayed immaculate and un-tea-stained.

“Yeah, okay, fair enough, but back with the monsters who actually make sense…” Flowey was doing his best to sound dismissive and snide and none of them were helping as they all launched into a mild-mannered debate on which monsters made sense.

“Do ghosts make sense, do you think?” Toriel asked pensively. There was a general positive reaction.

“AND SKELETONS DEFINITELY MAKE SENSE.”

“i dunno bro: i think we’ve always been a bit rib-iculous.” Sans revelled in the reaction before suggesting, “froggits though: there’s a monster that makes sense.”

Frisk nodded earnestly, putting their cup down next to Flowey to sign, ‘But what about T-E-M-M-I-E-S?’

“They most certainly do not make sense.”

“no way.”

“Wonderful creatures though they are, I must agree,” Asgore said regretfully.

“BUT TEMMIES DO HAVE DIGESTIVE SYSTEMS. I THINK. THEY PROBABLY DO. SO WHETHER A MONSTER MAKES SENSE OR NOT DOES NOT RELY ON THEIR ABILITY TO DIGEST FOOD PROPERLY!” Papyrus looked triumphant. Flowey couldn’t believe his life.

“was that what we were discussing?”

“YES! PAY ATTENTION WHEN WE’RE HAVING A SERIOUS DEBATE, SANS!”

‘Yeah, S-A-N-S. Don’t want to miss out on this kind of intellectual stimulation,’ Frisk signed, snickering.

Papyrus took a second to process Frisk’s signing, then nodded vigorously in agreement, shaking the couch enough that Asgore had to hold onto his cup tighter.

Flowey twisted his stalk round to glare at Frisk. “I’ve got to be honest: if this is the kind of conversation you people normally have, I want you to take me back to the mountain right now.”

“not too rosy, are you, bud?”

‘Double hit C-O-M-B-O! Nice!’

“Ohhhh for crying out loud,” Flowey groaned, turning to look imploringly at Toriel. “Please take me back.”

She giggled, holding a paw up to her mouth. “But this is so much fun!”

“EXACTLY!” Papyrus’ voice was as commanding without meaning to be as ever. “THIS IS OUR WAY OF WELCOMING YOU, FLOWEY! WHILE I DON’T APPROVE OF THE CONSTANT PUNS,” he shot Sans a dirty look, “IT’S ALL TO MAKE YOU FEEL MORE AT HOME! HOW ABOUT THAT, HMM? WASN’T THIS THE BEST IDEA? IS IT MAKING YOU FEEL MORE LIKE PART OF THE FAMILY YET?”

“The…the family…” Flowey felt like his stalk was crawling with discomfort, but everyone was beaming at him (even if Sans’ looked kind of forced, given the nature of his skull).

Asgore nodded encouragingly, and it was just getting weird how small and careful his movements were for such a big monster (especially when Flowey knew full well what he could do with all the strength coiled up in that body).

“Would you like that?” Toriel asked gently, setting her cup down on its saucer. “Or rather…would you not hate that? I know Frisk can be quite insistent at times, so I would like to know what you think also. And any friend Frisk would like to live with is welcome here. I would be more than happy to take care of you, young one.”

‘It’s your choice,’ Frisk thought, but Flowey didn’t turn round to look at them.

It was his choice? How was it his choice?! It was Frisk’s: everything about this reeked of them, their meddling and their choices and their stupid, stupid kindness! They shouldn’t have come down to get him and they definitely shouldn’t have brought him back up, but they did because they were stupid – they were so stupid! – and now they were squeezing him into a hole he wasn’t built for. As if he could ever fit into this happy family of theirs. Full of smiling faces, all willing and ready to turn on him and hate him. He wanted them to. Do it from the start so he wouldn’t waste any more time.

If this had really been his choice, he never would have come.

“WELL?” Papyrus was rocking in his seat, excitement radiating off him like light from an Echo Flower.

“…yes…?” Flowey groaned out, but apparently things like ‘tone’ or ‘body language’ were lost on these people because they were all smiling again, filled with unparalleled joy to have a sourpuss houseplant added to the family. Toriel already seemed to be making a mental list of things she needed to do to house him, and Frisk was sending happy thoughts his way (which he steadfastly shunned).

“EXCELLENT! I CAN’T WAIT FOR UNDYNE TO MEET YOU!”

Oh yeah. Undyne. That was going to be just fantastic. As if the maniac fish wasn’t enough of a problem on her own, with Undyne came Alphys, and with Alphys came problems of a distinctly memory-shaped type and wow, Frisk could increase the happy-thoughts-sending as much as they liked, Flowey was not going to let himself be dragged into that hell.

So of course the rest of them were already planning a visit to Undyne and Alphys the next day.

Chapter Text

Undyne opened the door almost as soon as Frisk had taken their finger away from the buzzer.

“What's up, squirt?” she said happily, picking the beaming-in-anticipation Frisk up and swinging them around in the landing outside her apartment before setting them down surprisingly softly. And then, like she’d only just noticed, “Hey, what's with the daisy?”

From Frisk's arms, Flowey glared. “Heck if I know, fishface,” he said as disagreeably as he reasonably could, “what's with you?”

Undyne blinked for a moment, giving Frisk the time to shuffle past her into the flat, and then her admittedly impressive set of fangs were out as she grinned. She looked excited, her gills flaring.

“You looking for a fight, daffodil?”

“I might be,” he spat back.

‘No you're not,’ Frisk thought to him firmly, setting him down on a counter next to a pot of dying pansies. ‘No he's not,’ they signed equally firmly to Undyne.

“Too bad,” she shrugged. “I thought someone here finally spoke my language. I'll put the tea on.”

Flowey supposed that might be her ineffectual way of showing there was no bad blood, and he didn’t appreciate it in the slightest. Probably even less than he appreciated being stuck next to the wilted pansies, like an ominous warning or something equally dumb. As if he’d be intimidated by that.

When their shoes and heavy winter coat (buttoned up lovingly by Toriel) were off and they'd retrieved Flowey, Frisk followed Undyne into the kitchen. It was warm, like someone had been cooking, and bright as winter morning light crashed through the windows. In fact, the whole apartment was light and airy, a world apart from Toriel's house, and Flowey had to admit that he might even like it if it wasn't so ridiculously messy. Never one to keep quiet when he had something nasty to say, he pointed out as much.

“Messy?” Undyne sneered, leaning the backs of her forearms on the kitchen counter as the kettle boiled. “This isn't mess, bluebell.”

“Not even blue, so you can stop with the name calling. And you're kidding me, right? There's got to be like a week's worth of empty cup noodles over there.” He swung his head over to the offending pile spreading out from the living room.

“Two weeks, actually. And that's not mess, tulip, that's called a scientific environment in which my Very Important scientist girlfriend works best. But I guess you wouldn't know anything about that, huh?”

Flowey did, in fact, know all about that and he also knew that Alphys’ best work was definitely not done surrounded by rubbish, but he wasn't suicidal enough to say it. Undyne looked too proud to listen to him anyway, so he went back to glooming on the kitchen table.

‘Where is Alphys, anyway? I thought Sundays were her days off.’ Frisk graciously accepted a steaming mug of tea and started to warm their hands around it as it cooled.

Undyne shrugged, still leaning against the counter because clearly she had no idea how this whole ‘putting your guests at ease’ thing worked (even if Frisk did seem perfectly comfortable).

“She’ll be here soon. She’s just out doing some nerd shi- stuff.”

Flowey widened his mouth into a grin stretching to his petal line. “You just swore, didn’t you?”

“Did not, petal-brain.”

“You so totally did. Oh boy,” he put on a tragic tone, raising a leaf wistfully, “I can’t even imagine what Toriel’s going to say when she hears you swore in front of her precious tiny little one!”

“Lay off it: Toriel swears more than that all the time!” But her fists were clenched and her toothy smile seemed just a bit forced. Putting the fear of Toriel into someone’s heart tended to have that effect.

‘Guys….it’s not even a big deal…’ Frisk signed, exasperated.

Flowey snooted at them. “Frisk, shut up while I’m still getting mileage out of this one.”

“Don’t act like you’re winning, punk! I could drag you to Mt. Ebott and back without breaking a sweat!”

‘You’re shouting, you’re shouting! The neighbours are going to complain again!’

To Flowey’s annoyance, that seemed to bring Undyne out of her temporary rage and she perked up, taking a swig from her own mug of tea like it was beer.

“Like they would! Nah, there’s no chance of that. Not after what happened the last time.” She looked out of the window dramatically, clearly waiting for someone to ask what mysterious happenings took place the last time.

Dutifully, Frisk cocked their head to the side in a silent question.

Undyne’s grin spread out again to practically cover her face. “We invited them round for dinner and made sure they had the time of their lives,” she said gleefully. “They’ll be talking about my spaghetti bake for years.”

Frisk made an impressed face and clapped their hands softly.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Flowey said. It was kind of a compulsion at this point: just a gentle reminder every minute or so that he was unsatisfied with how his life was going in general. Not that he had any idea of what would satisfy him, but the way he saw it, that was a problem for the people he was annoying to deal with.

All things considered, though, he had to admit that there were places he’d hate being in more than this.

“Seriously, kid: what is this thing anyway?” Undyne pointed a thumb at Flowey (narrowly missing his eye) as she finally sat down opposite Frisk.

‘New friend!’ Frisk signed happily. ‘He got left behind in the ruins so I went to get him the other day. He’s annoying and says mean things, and he probably means them, but I like him!’

“You’ve got some awful taste there, kid.”

“Get stuffed, fishface,” Flowey growled.

“Now who’s swearing?”

“That’s not a swear word! ‘Stuffed’ is not a swear word: are you an idiot?!”

Undyne’s grin stopped being so mercilessly smug as she laughed. The sound felt like it filled up the entire apartment – rich and bubbly with just enough grate to the edges to make it clear that it was hers. Frisk was smiling along, drinking their tea, and it hit Flowey that he’d never seen them so consistently happy before. Not that he’d really been watching or anything (okay, maybe sometimes), but they didn’t look so peaky anymore, didn’t seem like they were always holding themself back. That was nice, he guessed. Didn’t really concern him, but…it was nice.

Then the front door opened and suddenly things weren’t so nice anymore. Oblivious to how Undyne’s face lit up, Flowey stayed perfectly still, trying not to panic or do something Bad now that Alphys’ return had been thrust on him. It was going to be fine, it was going to be fine, or at least that’s what Frisk was frantically sending his way and he didn’t really believe a word of it but he kept repeating it out of principle. It wasn’t even like he had that much to lose, but here he was, shaking and needing to be calmed down by an idiot kid who had no sense of self-preservation.

Undyne had dashed out of the room the second Alphys had called out a tentative ‘I’m home’ and Flowey could hear them now, through the walls of the hall. It sounded like Undyne had picked up and swung her girlfriend round as well. Perhaps that was just a thing she did. Some showed affection with nice words and hugs; Undyne showed it by inducing nausea. Not that Alphys seemed to mind, with all the embarrassed giggling and welcome back kisses that seemed to be going on. A not-insignificant part of Flowey was actually glad – it was like on some level he couldn’t wait to shatter the happy domestic scene, even if he was…worried.

‘Don’t be scared: Alphys is a good person. We can talk to her. She probably won’t even remember, anyway.’

“I’m not scared,” he spat half-heartedly.

‘You’re a mess, though,’ Frisk pointed out.

Retort genius he might have been, but Flowey couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he settled for a simple ‘Shut up, Frisk.’ They looked at him exasperatedly, but before that fun exchange could go any further, Undyne was leading Alphys into the kitchen, although said ‘leading’ was more like an excuse to keep her arm around Alphys’ shoulders.

“Yeah, and the kid brought round a friend,” she was saying. Alphys, bless her little heart, stopped staring adoringly at her girlfriend to look into the kitchen, and there she froze. Just for a second, excitement and happiness dripped off her face to leave nothing but alarm.

She played it off easily – far easier than Flowey thought she would have – with the excuse of catching her claws on the floorboards, and Undyne didn’t seem to notice anything. Not the tiny breath of relief Frisk let out, not the hollow smile stretched over Flowey’s face because he didn’t know what else to do. Keep going, keep smiling, keep being bitter and insulting to anyone who dares to talk to you.

The necessary introduction was stilted and awkward, but no one seemed to mind. Undyne kept the conversation going perfectly well with just her and Frisk, anyway. Through exuberant stories about the people she met at work, the bench-pressing competitions she got into (and won), and Frisk’s excited input, she didn’t seem to notice that Alphys’ eyes kept flitting over to Flowey curiously. Curiously, not terrified: that was something, anyway. Thank goodness for small mercies and all that, except there was no way Flowey was actually going to feel grateful about that.

“Alright!” Undyne boomed, practically slamming her cup onto the table, but not hard enough for it to break. “Want to go down to the park, kid? Let the dumb flower meet his relatives?”

“Sure, and let’s go to the aquarium next, fin-head,” Flowey said, but it sounded half-hearted even to him. Not that it mattered, when Undyne wasn’t even sticking around to appreciate it: she and Frisk were already up and getting their shoes on. Ingrates.

“Alphys, you coming?”

Alphys – still sitting at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around a glass of some suspiciously orange liquid – jumped a little. “Yeah, in a minute…I-I’ll catch you up with the…with Flowey.”

Undyne popped her head round the doorway, finally looking at least somewhat suspicious.

“You sure? Are you feeling okay?” With rather brash movements, she took Alphys’ head in her hands and scrutinised her.

“O-of course! I’m fine.” Apart from the probably red-hot blush spreading across her face, of course, but that was none of Flowey’s business. He was trying not to look, anyway.

“Yeah?”

Alphys nodded vigorously.

“Well, if you’re sure. Love you,” Undyne pressed a probably very toothy kiss to Alphys’ forehead and went to push the grinning Frisk out of the apartment. Alphys took a second to compose herself, and then she finally looked Flowey in the eyes. She looked rather put upon.

“U-um…We’ve…met before, haven’t we…”

Somewhere in the stairwell, Undyne was saying something to Frisk, loud enough that they could hear it dimly even through the walls of the apartment. But it was weird how quiet it was, with her gone. The whole flat felt emptier, too. It didn’t help that Alphys looked ready to curl in on herself, huddled into her lab coat – and why was she even wearing that indoors, for crying out loud? – her fingers fidgeting as she waited for an answer she wasn’t going to get.

“I…I used you in an experiment, didn’t I?” she tried again. The words were hesitant and quiet, and Flowey decided to take pity on her.

“Yes.” He tilted his head, smiling nastily, but she wasn’t looking at him anymore. “Do you remember what you did?”

“I…think so…I injected you with DETERMINATION, didn’t I? But I…I don’t remember…” she laughed, embarrassed. “It’s all really fuzzy. That’s all I’ve got. I can’t even remember what happened after that, I just…remember you, slightly.”

Well, that was convenient.

“I don’t remember either,” Flowey said, his face and voice back to being angelic. “I just woke up in the underground and everyone was gone…”

“Oh gosh, that must have been awful!” Alphys put a hand to her mouth, still looking like she’d been wronged by the world. “I’m really sorry!”

“You don’t have to be.”

“M-maybe, but…it’s my fault you ended up like that, isn’t it? I created you, so I should have done better. I’m really, really sorry!”

Flowey looked at her (trembling at the edges, like she was ready to run away). “It’s okay.”

“I’m still sorry.”

Cars were driving up and down the street outside the apartment complex. It wasn’t background sound that Flowey was used to, and he felt like flinching every time one of them honked a horn or accelerated too fast. Alphys was still staring at the kitchen table like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

“You know…” she started off nervously, “I don’t think you need to worry about forgetting stuff. I mean, I keep realising there are things that don’t quite add up in my memory, or something like that, too. I’ve talked about it with Undyne and she says it’s the same for her, and I think the others are all missing bits and pieces here and there as well...So, I mean, it’s really annoying and kind of worrying? But you’re not alone.”

“That’s a relief!” Flowey said happily, wondering how thick he could lay it on before she realised that he’d been nowhere near this charming when the other two had been with them. But she was nodding and smiling (nervously, still) so he guessed it was probably fine.

“Sh-should we go down to join the others, then?”

“Yeah, sure, but…” he gestured to the pot.

“Oh! I’ll carry you, don’t worry about that!” Alphys looked pleased to do it, shoving her keys in her pocket and a scarf round her neck – foregoing shoes because who needed shoes with feet like that, and more to the point, who could find shoes with feet like that – and carrying him out of the apartment.

Flowey was getting used to being carried around by people at this point, but Alphys definitely wasn’t as gentle as Frisk was, and he had to brace himself for each jolting step downstairs.

“Hey…you don’t happen to remember why you were made, do you?” She was doing a good job of hiding it, but Flowey knew a pointed question when he heard one. So she remembered that much, at least: the amalgamates and the nature of DETERMINATION.

“No, I don’t remember anything,” he lied expertly, twisting his head round to look at her apologetically.

“Oh, okay. Too bad, I guess!”

“Mm.”

It wasn’t like there was much snow on the ground anymore, not when it hadn’t snowed in at least the past day and they were in a well-used public park, but Undyne and Frisk were still trying to play with it. Alphys sat down on a bench near them, putting Flowey carefully beside her, and huddled into her scarf.

For a while, they just watched the other two. Undyne waved excitedly to catch her girlfriend’s attention and went back to roaring encouragements as Frisk built a snowman, or what was probably supposed to be a snowman but looked more like a snow-dwarf. Snow-blob, maybe. Two misshapen snow poffs stacked on top of each other.

It didn’t help that Frisk’s outerwear was seriously minimising any sort of movement. Toriel, in her coddling, over-enthusiastic way, had wrapped the kid up in a sweater, a thick winter coat with giant buttons, a much-too-wide scarf Papyrus had apparently knitted for them, and mittens patterned with tiny ghosts. Undyne had added a lop-sided woolly hat to the tottering sphere that was Frisk, and now she was crouched near them, hurling suggestions and laughing raucously every time they slipped. It looked peaceful.

Flowey watched, temporarily subdued, or at least he just couldn’t be bothered to get annoyed at the scene in front of him. Frisk gave him a thumbs-up and put on their Determined face as they tried to bend over to scrape more snow together.

The entertainment went on for a bit longer until Frisk finally managed to dispose of the hat and scarf by giving them to the shivering Alphys, which Undyne couldn’t reasonably grouse about. And then, in an act of betrayal Flowey couldn’t help but feel proud of them for, Frisk smiled beatifically at Undyne and hit her square in the face with a snowball they’d apparently been hiding.

Like flipping a switch, Undyne burst into life.

“Oh, it’s so on!” she shouted happily, leaping to the ground to start rolling snowballs, but Frisk had clearly been preparing under the guise of finishing the snow-blob and they ducked behind it, grabbing a snowball in each hand and throwing them with all their might. The snowballs fell short, but the effort was there, and that was enough of an attack to wind Undyne up even further. She gave up on the snowballs and began to chase Frisk around the patch of park they’d dominated.

Flowey couldn’t see how it was supposed to be fun. Frisk kept stumbling over their own boots and it was obvious to anyone paying attention that Undyne wasn’t going faster than a jog, but Frisk was beaming and out of breath, and Undyne looked just as happy, in her own way. Predictably, Undyne caught Frisk around the waist and swung them around before suplexing them (gently) and they stayed on the ground, laughing helplessly and silently.

“You not going to play?” Undyne called over to Alphys as she got up and brushed herself down, waiting for Frisk to recover.

“No, I’m fine here!”

Flowey could only keep from being nasty for so long. “Just being outside is a miracle in itself, huh?”

A snowball whacked the side of his head hard enough to spin him round, just shy of actually knocking his pot over.

“Watch the insinuations, petal-brain!” Undyne called to him cheerfully.

His face was twisting into something horrible before he knew it. “I’ll tear you limb from limb!” he roared, mouth so big he could feel the fangs clanking together, his voice a rumble of gravel and shrieking glass.

For a terrifying few seconds, nobody said anything. Flowey couldn’t even feel grateful for how empty their end of the park was, not when he was suddenly small and weak and breakable again. Frisk wasn’t laughing anymore either; their mittens were trembling and they held their hands together to stop them, but he wasn’t paying attention to that. Instead, he stared at Undyne – stared and stared and stared, his non-existent heart in his mouth – as he waited for the surely inevitable recognition to flood her face.

It didn’t come. His senses were filed down to points: the slow, steady return of Alphys’ breath next to him; Undyne’s unkind smile filling up his sight with teeth and eyes that burned with something he couldn’t understand.

But they hadn’t remembered.

He’d messed up and he’d got lucky again and it made him want to scream: was he just supposed to take all this stupid tension and get nothing out of it?! Was he supposed to have a heart attack each time, frightened into silence by something he couldn’t name, when he shouldn’t care at all?! This was so stupid, stupid, stupid and he hated himself for it just as much as he hated everyone else.

“Rip me limb from limb?” Undyne scoffed, her voice laden with equal parts challenge and threat. “I’d like to see you try, punk! I could take ten of you any day!” Her hand was on her hip, her chin was lifted high and her scarf flapped beside her in the wind that had just picked up, howling through the trees behind her and Frisk.

She didn’t remember, he was certain, but she was looking at him like she wanted to kill him.

Chapter Text

 “They all hate me.”

‘No, no, they don’t…’

“I’m impressed you can get that level of boredom into your thought-voice, but how about you don’t bother from now on?” Flowey huffed, still refusing to look at them. He was having a perfectly acceptable time looking at the dust and floorboards under Frisk’s bed and no stupid kid was going to distract him.

So of course Frisk started to crawl underneath the bed too.

“Do you have any idea how dusty it is under here?” Flowey grumbled, mostly because he couldn’t be bothered to move away from them.

‘Yeah.’

“I mean honestly, have you cleaned this at all? Ever? Because it’s creepy, just letting you know.”

‘I know.’ They propped their chin comfortably on their arms, the top of their altogether too-fluffy hair just brushing the underside of the bed, and looked at him with eyes crinkled up in a smile.

“Toriel’s going to have a fit if she sees what you’re doing to your clothes.”

‘That’s okay. I want to be here for you.’

Gallingly, Flowey found he didn’t even have the energy to protest that, so he went with a mumbled “Shut up, Frisk.”

Valiantly ignoring him, Frisk blew a dust bunny away and rested the side of their head on their arm. ‘So what’s up?’

“They all hate me, I told you: don’t you listen?”

‘They don’t hate you.’

“They do.” He’d seen the resentment in Toriel’s eyes, the hatred in Undyne’s, the distrust in everyone else’s, and that was fine, it was all fine and should have been fine, except that it wasn’t. Not quite. In a world where he was god, able to snatch everyone’s souls away from them in an instant, it would have been fine. It was easy to shrug off being hated when you were powerful. He wasn’t sure what to do with it when he was rooted into a chipped ceramic flowerpot, only able to move at a shuddering snail’s pace if he dragged himself.

‘They don’t hate you,’ Frisk repeated, like saying it again would push it further into his brain.

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed the pattern in the conversation yet, so sure, let’s do it again: they do.”

He felt absolutely useless. Somehow it was even worse with Frisk doing everything for him, because they could take that back at any time. He wanted them to, so badly. He’d thought about it a lot: imagined them turning to him, smiling cruelly for once, and finally choosing to FIGHT. He’d imagined the satisfaction of fighting back, of seeing the bloodlust turn their smile as horrific and twisted as his own, until it was just the two of them, cutting and hurting and killing each other, over and over in a cocktail of resets he wouldn’t be able to tell apart. He wanted that, he thought.

Frisk patted his head, their palm just gently bouncing off his drooping petals.

‘I don’t think you can read people very well,’ they thought, more a passing comment than an insult. ‘They really don’t hate you: it’s not like that.’

They were just being dense to annoy him now, he was sure.

“For crying out loud Frisk, they do! You don’t understanding anything!”

Frisk cocked their head to the side and gave him a short-lived withering look. ‘Okay, sure, I don’t. But let’s go downstairs now?’

“No way. They’re all down there: I heard them come in.”

‘Yeah…that was sort of the point…we can go and make friends…Or you can, I mean.’

“You can go. Just go be with them: leave me alone.”

‘I’ll be with you the whole time: it won’t be scary.’

“Go away.” Flowey ground his teeth, shirking away from Frisk’s touch.

‘It’ll be easy, I promise!’

“Why won’t you leave me alone?!” he glared daggers at them. To his delight, their smile faded. Or at least, it felt like delight, but it felt like something else as well, something that squirmed in the pit of his throat. He cleared it, rasping before shouting, “I’m never going down there again! Are you seriously so stupid that you don’t get it? Every time I see them, I just…they all hate me, and they should hate me, for what I did but they don’t even remember and nothing can ever make that right again!”

Frisk was looking at him like they understood. He wanted to hate them for it.

‘I told you: it’s not like that. Let’s just go downstairs.’

Flowey rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and they’ll all want to kill me so how about no. How stupid are you, really? This determination thing is getting annoying.”

‘You’re exaggerating it all, you know. Don’t be so dramatic.’

Flowey renewed his glaring and huffed angrily. With apparently infinite patience, Frisk kept watching him, rocking their head back and forth on their crossed arms. The air around the two of them began to feel stale.

“Say, I’ve got a great idea!” Flowey switched his expression to Bright And Cheerful #3 with the matching saccharine voice.

Frisk scrunched up their nose. ‘Based on the alignment of the moon and the sun and the fact that I haven’t seen you smile like that since you tried to convince me bullets were friendliness pellets, I don’t think it’s going to be all that great.’

“You should just reset!”

‘And would you look at that: I was right.’

“No, no, hear me out: your last SAVE was before you picked me up, right? Just reset from there and do everything exactly as you did, but don’t come and get me! It’s a flawless plan.” He beamed, keeping his stem straight, his petals puffed out, and his expression in Bright And Cheerful #2 – almost the same as #3 but with less smugness.

It didn’t seem to work on Frisk and they frowned. ‘No.’

Flowey drooped sulkily. “You could at least play along. Fine, then! Just take me back to Mt Ebott!”

‘Also no.’

The sides of Flowey’s mouth twisted downwards. “Stop pretending this can work.”

‘It’s working already, you just don’t want to admit that. Why can’t you give in?’

“Why can’t you?!”

It was getting claustrophobic under the bed with the two of them and Flowey’s insatiable anger flaring up between them. He wanted to get out and run away, but he wanted to stay with them, bound to them so close they’d never leave him, so close that they’d grow to hate him.

‘I just want you to be happy too!’ Their hands were worrying at their wrists, twisting the skin at their pulse and rubbing the bone.

“Oh, you want me to be happy? You want to bring me happiness too? You think that you can save everyone by being kind, even though being kind never brings anything but pain?! Well, here’s the pain, Frisk,” he laughed. “You’ve been trying so hard to make us a happy family: you, Toriel and Asriel, but I’m not him. I can never be him! Get that into your tiny brain and let me leave! You’re just making this worse for everyone by keeping me here!”

Frisk’s eyes widened and it felt like the first time Flowey had seen them open them so much. Their fingers stilled for a moment, their lips trembling as if they wanted to say something, as if they could even if they did want to. And then it was over, and they were frowning again.

‘That’s enough.’ They were pouting. It reminded Flowey too much of Toriel when she was angry – not really angry, just the sort of ‘caught you eating pie at midnight’ or ‘realised you’d known what your sibling had been doing to themself all along’ angry. Just enough to whip him out of his rage.

“What do you mean, ‘that’s enough’?” he laughed nervously. “Stop looking at me like that. I’m not falling for anything you say: I know you don’t want me!”

‘Don’t be silly.’ Frisk shuffled backwards on their elbows and knees. ‘Look, we’re going now.’

“Frisk, don’t do this to me again.”

They dragged him from under the bed and gave the two of them a good brush-down. ‘Look, we’re both going, isn’t that incredible?’

“Put me down.”

‘It’s so nice of you to finally agree to come downstairs with me.’

“Frisk, I hate you and you need to put me down now!”

‘I knew you could be agreeable if you tried! Let’s go and socialise.’

The safety of Frisk’s room was already long gone, so Flowey gave up and seethed in his pot.

The living room/dining room space was altogether too full of pie. Too full of people as well, but the pie was what caught Flowey’s attention the most and that was saying something, in Toriel’s house, a veritable haven for pie and other crusted foodstuffs. He could already tell that her habits hadn’t changed.

“Sorry to disappoint you all, but Frisk’s not letting me leave,” he said drily once Frisk had put him down (on the table in front of everyone, thank you Frisk). “Looks like you’re just going to have to postpone this little send-off party.”

Looking out at the…smiling? group, he felt himself lose steam a bit. They didn’t look disappointed or anything, and there were too many of them. He’d expected Toriel and Asgore, he supposed, but Undyne was there with her arm wrapped around Alphys casually, and the smarmy skeleton brothers were lounging about (Sans) and standing to excited attention (guess).

“No, no, you are mistaken!” Toriel said happily. “This is not a party to send you away, but rather one to welcome you to our home! It is not much, as we thought you might be a little too disoriented to wish for a large party, but I hope you like it even so.”

She looked so pleased, with Frisk beaming next to her at about hip-height (they’d grown, probably), and Flowey felt silenced. From shock more than anything else, because usually he’d have loved to rip nice things apart, so honestly what was the deal, but the reason behind it didn’t really make a difference in the end. He stared up at them all, crowded in a semi-circle around the table he’d been ceremoniously set down on.

Undyne leapt into the silence with a voice just too loud for comfort “Yeah! We even brought you presents. You’re going to love them.” It sounded almost like a threat, but that was enough to get Flowey scoffing again.

 “Look, that aggressive hostess thing is getting a li- …is that a bag of compost. Are those gardening shears?!”

“Picked ’em out specially.” She was definitely messing with him now: no grin that big could be innocent.

“I cannot believe-”

“Now, now, don’t go getting violet on us. ’sides, the compost was my idea.” Sans’ permanent smile looked even more snickery than usual.

“Oh, of course it was, why would it not be, ugh!” Flowey’s lip curled (not a small gesture, with his face) and Frisk rose to the occasion with steady, comforting and incredibly patronising patting that felt more like a way to keep him in line than anything else. By their side, Toriel looked about to say something soothing, but clearly the tall cheery one had gone too long without destroying everyone’s eardrums and ohhh Flowey felt bitter.

“Do not fear, Flowey! My brother might have been insensitive in his choice of present – which I can assure you that I, the great Papyrus, had nothing to do with – but there are many other things to enjoy! Feast your eyes!” He swung a bony hand back (narrowly missing Undyne’s head) and gestured at the spread of food in the dining room.

It was, admittedly, kind of impressive in an unnecessary sort of way. Surely no party this small needed three whole pies, four heaped plates of identical spaghetti with slightly different garnishes, and a ridiculous amount of crisps in bowls around the table. There was even bunting up around the walls with the words ‘Merry Christmas’ scribbled out in a vaguely artistic way. The bulbous, gently steaming tea pot was obviously necessary, though. Flowey would allow the tea.

“You know I can’t eat, right? I mean, I’ve been here like three days now, had you just not noticed or something? We literally had a conversation about this the first day I came here. Why would that make me happy?”

He wasn’t sure how to feel about the little breeze of relief that washed through him when no one’s faces dropped at the helpful reminder, so he settled for glaring at Frisk when their patting got heavier.

‘Don’t be rude,’ they thought to him. He stuck his tongue out at them.

“Well obviously the food’s not for you, moron!”

“Undyne, don’t call our new friend that! That isn’t following the friendliness procedures I briefed you on at all!”

“Neither’s what he’s doing, so I figured it was anything goes at this point.”

“A-and actually!” Alphys piped up with admirable bravery. “Undyne’s using a sort of technique I told her might work better for her! It’s uh, this thing I saw a lot of in um, my, uh…well, I guess I can’t really pretend they’re history books anymore, huh? Haha…Anyway! Apparently being…a-abrasive can work too!”

Papyrus looked blank for a second, then perked up considerably. “Well, if a great scientist like you says so, I’m sure it’s right! Wowie, a new way of making friends! Do you think I should try it?”

In the moment of consideration that followed, Toriel took Frisk’s hand and they went off to cut the pies.

“Probably best not to, bro.”

“Yes, I think you’re right. After all, my way of making friends is already so great, there can be no improvements! But maybe this can work for you too, Flowey!” he cornered Flowey with a blinding smile. “What a brilliant idea!”

“Except for the part where I don’t want to make friends, loser.”

“That is alright too,” Asgore stepped in unexpectedly, holding out cups of tea for those who could drink it. “It would certainly be nice if you would like to make friends, but we will not force you. Not everyone enjoys the company of others, after all.”

“See, that’s nice and all,” Undyne sipped her tea appreciatively, “but you’d better put in some effort to be friendly, you got that?”

Flowey rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s me: Flowey the friendly neighbourhood flower, spreading love and joy wherever I go. Ugh, talking to you idiots is so- wait, what are you doing?! Don’t just lift me up, idiot! I said don’t!”

Papyrus looked vaguely troubled. “But if I don’t, you will be left here alone while we all move into the other room. That isn’t very party-like!”

“Then get Frisk to do it, ugh!” To his intense irritation, this seemed to be the first thing he’d said that any of them were taking seriously. Even in the next room, Toriel had stopped talking to Sans enough to look down expectantly at Frisk, but Frisk already had it covered and was walking over determinedly. As if this needed determination. They picked him up and, under everyone’s watchful (and worried, in Asgore and Alphys’ cases) gaze, delivered him safely to the food table, like some bizarre ritual.

‘Better?’ they signed, probably so everyone else wouldn’t be confused when Flowey grumbled the customary “Shut up, Frisk”.

Things calmed down from there. With tea and pie (and spaghetti for the brave of palate) the others started to chat, carefully leaving Flowey as much space as he could possibly want for optimised grumping and sourness.

Asgore, Alphys and Undyne started off swapping fun and exciting tales from whatever work they had, which then quickly deteriorated into a passionate discussion on heroism and really big swords and how utterly impractical (but awesome) they were. On the couch in the living room side, Toriel and Sans kept coming out with a frankly awe-inspiring number of bad jokes in an odd tennis match kind of way, knocking them back and forth. Flowey couldn’t have stopped paying attention for more than half a minute (to shout back a retort after Undyne insulted him), but when he switched back because bad jokes were, sadly, preferable to sword discussions, they were already having a somewhat one-sided conversation about teaching techniques and how well the monster children were integrating into school life. Flowey tuned out.

For their part, Frisk and Papyrus mostly flitted between the groups and finally settled either side of Flowey. He tolerated them. He didn’t feel in much of a state to keep putting up futile protests, anyway. Toriel hadn’t been off the mark when she’d assumed he was disoriented, but it wasn’t exactly disorientation, it was more…confusion. Lining up your plans perfectly and having them crumble all at once until you were only left with dust on your hands. Having the unexpected and downright unthinkable happen to you and being forced to accept it.

None of them should have been so welcoming to him – not when he’d only been cruel because cruel was all he knew how to be – but here he was, stuck on a table in a stuffy dining room with walls covered in family photos and framed crayon drawings, watching them all living around him.

It didn’t make any sense.

‘Are you alright?’ Frisk asked him silently.

Just for something to look at, Flowey fixed his eyes on an obscenely tassled cushion plumped up on an armchair. He nodded slowly, feeling the familiar ache of his roots as they strained against the walls of the pot. It would be the easiest thing in the world to break out.

But then Papyrus was asking him his opinion on puzzles and the deplorable state of the Royal Guard (non-existent), and he found himself answering with less bite than usual. He didn’t really care, but he felt tired. This could be fun too, maybe. Even if the whole thing made him itch and squirm if he thought about it too much, it had the potential to be more enjoyable than staying rooted at the bottom of a mountain nobody lived in anymore.

Smiling at how cooperative he was being, Frisk held out a forkful of pie for him (still made with monster ingredients, still cooked with fire magic, just like he remembered). Figuring it couldn’t be too disastrous to let everyone know that he could, in fact, ingest monster food, he ate it.

Chapter Text

Two weeks since Flowey had been forcibly dragged above ground, it became pretty obvious that the history books he’d read had not been exaggerating and had, in fact, been understating the amount humans seemed to care about Christmas. It was a little impressive that even he was aware of it, since, due to some regrettable events, he was now only allowed out of the house with great reluctance on Toriel’s part (the ice sculpture incident had been a mistake: he was mature enough to admit that).

As it was, the entire neighbourhood that he could see from the snow-covered garden or the thankfully double-glazed windows was an onslaught of Christmas paraphernalia. He’d asked Frisk what the whole thing was about, once (around the time he’d seen a Christmas-themed chewing gum advert on TV), but they’d just shrugged.

‘Dunno. I don’t celebrate it.’

So that was helpful. And while everyone else had pretty much followed Frisk’s example of not celebrating it, the festive spirit had got to Toriel at least, and she’d started to plan a family get-together for the winter. And if the date just happened to coincide with when party decorations were on sale, well, wasn’t that convenient?

And that was how, in an effort to get the house as empty as possible the day before so Toriel could clean and prepare it, Flowey found himself shoved out unceremoniously with Frisk and Papyrus for the afternoon.

Before they set off, Frisk disposed of their thick woollen scarf (fair enough: no one really needed a sweater, winter coat, mittens, balaclava and a scarf) by wrapping it around Flowey’s stalk.

“It’s going to get dirty,” he grumbled.

Frisk nodded in a kind of ‘what can you do?’ way and looked up excitedly at Papyrus.

“Well!” he said, just as excited. “Where do you think we should go, Frisk?”

Frisk balanced Flowey’s pot in the crook of their arm and pointed in roughly the direction of the woods.

“An excellent idea! Let’s go on an adventure through the woods!”

Flowey pouted. “That sounds terrible.”

“Terribly exciting!”

Flowey screwed up his face. “…Yeah, okay, fine, let’s just go.”

“Onwards, then!” He raised an arm adventurously.

Flowey really didn’t get why Papyrus had to be such a dork about it, but Frisk had their game face on and punched the air along with him, so there wasn’t much to do but get the slew of second-hand embarrassment. Frisk took Papyrus’ hand, still propping the flowerpot up on their side, and the three of them set off.

It wasn’t like every monster had decided to settle in the same neighbourhood, but many of them had (especially the Snowdin folk, what with how similar the weather was for the time being). The little group passed three other monsters just on the short walk to the woods, including a very uncomfortable Vulkin who looked like they were regretting their choice of home. Frisk donated their balaclava to them, politely ignoring how it began to singe at the edges even as the Vulkin smiled blissfully in thanks.

“Your hair’s all staticy now,” Flowey pointed out.

“And very dashing it looks too!”

Frisk preened, shaking their mane of hair around to show it off. And perhaps it should have annoyed Flowey that literally every insult or barbed comment he tried on them seemed to roll off like water on rubber, but it was surprising how used to it he’d got. Let Frisk be as happy as they liked, he figured, just as long as they didn’t inflict it on him. Which they did, constantly, but his point still stood. Somewhere.

After a nerve-shatteringly icy trip – during which Frisk almost-slipped not once but twice (to Flowey’s very loud indignation) – they did finally make it to the woods. They weren’t real woods, per se: more like sculpted imitations along small but scenic hills with an iced-over lake in the middle, but that was what you got for leaving the underground, Flowey thought. And okay, most of his memories were of the palace, but the Snowdin forest – now that was a real forest: massive, undying, and deep enough to lose yourself in it completely. He’d enjoyed spending time there, afterwards. You didn’t feel the cold so much as a flower. Didn’t feel much of anything, really.

Not that that would stop him from getting angry about snowballs being so much as angled in his direction.

“You keep that thing well away from me!” he shouted from the base of the tree Frisk had left him at. They grinned, but dropped the snowball obediently.

Papyrus laughed his usual (annoying) laugh. It grated on Flowey’s non-existent ears. “We should set out some rules before beginning, to make sure everything’s not in my favour!”

‘Let’s not!’ Frisk signed back to him, ducking behind a tree to start rolling up snowballs.

“Aha, I am pleased to see your confidence! Clearly I’ve been rubbing off on you. Which is an excellent thing! I’m very proud!” He laughed again into the chilled air, hands on his hips and scarf flying back dramatically.

“Hey, loser,” Flowey said dryly. “Pro-tip: if you don’t get moving soon, they’re going to win. And much as I’d love to see that happen, it’d be boring.”

“Hahaha! Both of you have simply fallen for my magnificent trick! You see, I cannot possibly lose in my own territory. There is snow chance of that happening!”

“Was that a pun.”

“So all that’s left for me to do now is lie in wait!”

Flowey sighed. “Quick question.”

“Yes, Flowey?” Papyrus pointed to him expectantly.

“Does your brilliant plan include bone attacks? Because remember how you so nicely promised to Toriel that you’d keep attacks to a minimum around humans?”

“My brilliant plan does not include bone attacks, but I am delighted that you’re taking such an interest!”

Behind their tree, Frisk had made a pile of snowballs almost as tall as they were.

Flowey rolled his eyes back to Papyrus (who was still doing nothing but pose dramatically) with as much sarcasm as he could summon up. “Well, I for one am on tenterhooks to see how this plays out.”

In the end, it was nowhere near as entertaining as Flowey had hoped, on account of Frisk still having pathetic arm strength and of Papyrus’ plan basically being ‘dodge the poorly-thrown snowballs long enough to get Frisk with a tickling attack’. It was something he’d apparently been really taken with ever since he found out how ticklish Frisk was (very – Flowey could attest to that, because they’d react if his petals so much as touched their toes for a millisecond).

With a judgmental eye, Flowey watched Frisk convulse in silent laughter while Papyrus continued to tickle them triumphantly and mercilessly.

“Are you guys finished yet?” he whined.

“Would you like to join in?” Papyrus asked enthusiastically. Frisk was well and truly beaten – with a good three quarters of their snowball stock left unused (tragic) – and he lifted them onto his shoulders so they could smile breathlessly and calm down, clutching at his scarf. His boots made a satisfying crunching sound as he walked to loom over Flowey cheerfully.

“Sorry, but flowers aren’t ticklish, genius.”

“Perhaps, but! You said you couldn’t eat either, and that wasn’t true! A very admirable attempt at holding yourself back from my cooking, though! I know how much of a struggle it must be.”

Flowey raised an eyebrow, but even contempt couldn’t help him ignore how deeply uncomfortable he felt. “Look…you can stop thinking the best of me like that. It’s getting seriously annoying.”

“Thinking the best of you? That isn’t what I’m doing at all! I just believe in you!”

Two practically identical sets of innocent faces smiled down at him, and he gave up.

“Yeah, okay. Never mind. What are we doing next, anyway? I might not be able to feel the cold, but I’m freezing from boredom over here.”

Papyrus laughed triumphantly. “Never fear! I have many, many ideas! This is my territory, after all, even if I have been advised that putting out puzzles in public places wouldn’t be appreciated!” With uncharacteristically slow and careful movements, he picked up Flowey’s pot and lifted him for Frisk to take. Flowey endured it.

“Okay, where next, then?”

Even with his centre of balance all off owing to the small child and potted plant on his shoulders, Papyrus managed to do a power stance. “I have no idea!”

He started walking anyway.

Asgore’s house seemed as good a destination as any so, after Papyrus and Frisk had worn themselves out (making snow skeletons and snow angels and, ugh, snow whatever-the-heck-else, Flowey didn’t even know) they headed there. Asgore was more than happy to see them.

His house was smaller than Frisk and Toriel’s (counter-intuitive, given how huge he was, but it was whatever) but he ushered them inside the cramped hall and went to put on the tea while Flowey was put on an unsteady shelf and the others took off their snow-soaked coats.

For all that they could be called that, the gang went into the steamed-up kitchen to watch Asgore making the tea. He’d got it down to an art, or maybe it just looked like that because he took so much care in it. It was nostalgic, watching him.

With red cheeks and nose, Frisk propped their chin up on the counter and watched him. Papyrus propped his arms up on Frisk’s head, waiting for the tea to brew.

“It’s camomile,” Asgore said happily. “I thought it might be a tad insensitive to make golden flower tea.”

Well, at least someone seemed to care how Flowey felt. He’d caught Sans and Undyne casually ripping flowers to pieces in his presence too many times.

With insufferably gentle movements, Asgore put cups and saucers and the teapot onto a tray, ushering the other three through into the cramped living room. Papyrus and Frisk sat down on the sofa and – since he was now a good, housetrained plant with a pot that didn’t leak soil everywhere – Flowey was allowed up too. Tea was poured.

“I trust you have been well?” Asgore said, as if he really enjoyed small talk.

Frisk nodded and Papyrus leapt in to elaborate. “Frisk’s started to go to my dance clubs, as a Fun Activity For Friends! Everyone thinks they’re getting along splendidly!” He preened, like it was a personal compliment. “I’m sure it’s all due to my influence. And their natural talent! Flowey doesn’t seem as interested so far, but I’m sure they’ll get the hang of it!”

“For the last time, I am a flower, dancing just isn’t on the table for me.” He’d had to repeat the same thing so many times that he couldn’t even be bothered to add bite.

‘Interpretive dance?’ Frisk signed innocently. ‘You could do that without legs.’

“I could also sit and complain all day without legs, and really, which one seems more likely at this point?”

Asgore stirred his tea with a spoon about half the size of one of his fingers. “Could you not perhaps take up singing, instead, if you wanted to express yourself artistically?”

“Or drawing!” Papyrus offered. “I’m sure my brother would be more than happy to help you get started!”

“Oh yeah, I’m so sure he- wait, he draws?”

“Of course!” Papyrus thankfully put the tea down before drawing himself up to his full height. “Perhaps he doesn’t do it very often, but I, the great Papyrus, can attest to the fact that he does, in fact, draw!”

“When? He never does anything.”

“A long time ago, back before we met you, or even Frisk! But, much as I hate to admit it, you’re right.” Papyrus put his hand to his chin and frowned in a concerned way. “I think he’s become even more of a lazybones since we got up here!”

‘That’s not true,’ Frisk signed pointedly. ‘He cooks now, sometimes. And he helps Alphys when she wants it.’

“Frisk! You’re absolutely right!”

Flowey rolled his eyes (just a level 2 rolling, nothing noteworthy). “He still sleeps until the afternoon, though.”

‘But he works through the night?’

“I know you’re still a kid, Frisk, but watching TV and lounging about isn’t working.”

Frisk seemed about to counter but all of a sudden Papyrus held his head in his hands (alarming Asgore more than a little) and said woefully, “You both raise such good points!”

In an effort to change the subject (that Flowey thoroughly approved of), Asgore turned to Frisk. “And how is Tori…el?”

‘She’s good! She invited a new neighbour over last week and they chatted for a long time. I think they’re friends now. She’s looking forward to going back to work once school starts again, too.’

“I am so glad!” He seemed it, too. In general, he just seemed…happy. Flowey guessed that was what came of not having to kill kids anymore, but he pushed that thought away as too snide. And he’d usually have been fine with that – snide was great! Snide was comfortable – but it felt too weird. Maybe it was the tea fumes getting to him.

Frisk asked about Asgore’s gardening and he looked positively delighted to answer them, settling back against the couch.

“I am just so excited to think of all the seeds and bulbs I have been waiting to plant when the snow melts,” Asgore said in his gentle way, holding his steaming cup in comically large hands. This was what they’d apparently come for: to listen to him ramble about gardening, and, to his credit, Papyrus seemed into it.

“I have already planted snowdrops, but I cannot tell if they will grow properly over their first winter. But after that, I have such plans! The cold has wiped away the nasturtiums, so the whole west bed will be open. I have been wondering if I should not try some sort of vegetable: I hear kale grows well here.”

Papyrus made some enthusiastic comment about tomatoes, but Flowey wasn’t listening anymore. Without tea to distract him, he’d started to look around the living room. It was homely: fluffier than Toriel’s, somehow, and without most of the clutter Frisk and the skeletons (well, one skeleton) seemed to leave around them. There was a fireplace (empty, probably walled up inside if the flower-patterned wallpaper was anything to go by) with knick-knacks along the mantelpiece and so many framed photos along the walls that it was difficult to see the wallpaper at all. Most of the photos looked like Asgore had taken them. One wondered how, with hands that big, but clearly he’d managed somehow.

The couches were no better: all patchwork cushions (apparently mostly made by Papyrus in his brief spin at patchworking) that Flowey really wouldn’t have minded getting soil on. There appeared to be a particularly ugly-looking pink carpet under the coffee table, too. It had unidentifiable cartoon flowers patterned all over it.

Asgore caught him looking, and smiled warmly, just like he used to. “Would you like a tour of the house? I imagine it might be crowded if all four of us went, but Frisk knows it well enough by now, I am sure.”

Frisk nodded and gulped down the rest of their tea, scooping Flowey up into their arms before he had a chance to protest. For reasons best known to them alone, Frisk started to take him up to the first floor before even looking in on the rest of the ground floor.

“I’m not even interested,” Flowey pointed out.

‘Oh, shush. You’ll like it.’

“Not to inconvenience you with logic or anything, but you haven’t exactly been the best judge of what I like and what I don’t recently.”

‘Well, it’s not easy when you won’t admit to liking anything, you know.’ Their feet padded softly on the carpet and, without a scrap of hesitation, they opened the door to the bedroom.

“I like loads of things! There’s…” Flowey trailed off, not from running out of ideas without even starting, but because of Asgore’s bedroom.

“It’s the exact same,” he said hollowly.

Frisk nodded, looking exceedingly pleased with themself. ‘Told you you’d like it.’

“I’d like seeing something I could just as easily see back down in the underground? Lay off it, Frisk.”

‘Well, it shut you up. That’s a victory, isn’t it?’

“Get stuffed, Frisk.” He wasn’t looking at them or even glaring, though: his eyes were fixed on the room.

There was a scribbled flower in yellow crayon framed on the wall, and Frisk took him to it (which they really didn’t have to do: he hadn’t even been staring, for crying out loud). The paper was crinkled, slightly, like it had been flattened over and over again to try and keep it the same. There was glass over it – actual glass, like it was some kind of piece in a museum.

‘It’s yours, isn’t it?’ Frisk asked, softly even in their mind.

“…Yeah. How angry do you think he’d be if we burned the damn thing?”

‘Very. It’s not that bad.’

“It spits in the face of literally every artistic taste out there: it’s a drawing I did as a kid, Frisk, how is it not bad? It needs to go.”

‘Nah, I don’t think so. Come on,’ they hoisted him higher into their arms and did a slow walk round the room, making sure he could see everything, before heading back to the door. Nothing else was interesting, anyway: it was all fluff and pillow and lacking in personality, and Flowey couldn’t be bothered with it. Asgore had kept it all the same anyway: why would Flowey be interested in stuff he’d seen a million times over?

Something occurred to him. “Wait.”

Frisk did, cocking their head to the side.

“Open the wardrobe.”

‘Wait, what? No. That’s just rude.’

“Please, Frisk.”

Frisk hesitated, probably more from Flowey actually saying ‘please’ than anything else. Flowey supposed that was fair.

‘It would be a Very Bad Thing to look in someone’s wardrobe without their permission,’ Frisk thought carefully.

“And what, going into their room is so much better?”

‘Wardrobes have clothes in them. Clothes can be…scandalous,’ they settled on the word without a whole lot of conviction.

“Yeah, because I’m sure Asgore, of all people, has scandalous clothes. Are you being serious right now? Just open it. Please.”

With a great show of dragging their feet and being reluctant about it (when they were the one who’d carried him in here, so it was really all their fault), Frisk went to the wardrobe. After listening for a second or two, just to make sure Asgore (or Papyrus, because that would probably have been the worse option, all things considered) wasn’t coming up the stairs, they heaved open the massive door.

“It’s still there.”

Frisk didn’t say anything, and Flowey didn’t turn around to look at them. The sweater was as ridiculously big as ever, as unnecessarily pink as ever, as generally hideous as ever. Flowey struggled to remember a time when he’d actually thought it had looked good, but he had, once. He’d complimented it, he remembered.

But he’d only liked it that much because it was the first thing Chara had ever knitted.

And it wasn’t like memories had come flooding back to him just because he saw some stupid sweater (they’d always been there, under timeline upon timeline’s worth of lives and deaths), it just felt like he’d lost them a bit. Or a lot, depending on how you looked at it. Or maybe it didn’t feel like anything at all; he was used to that, at least.

He turned to Frisk with a cutting comment ripe in his mouth, but it died when he saw their expression.

“W-what’s with that face?” he laughed, but it sounded fake even to him.

They ripped their eyes from the wardrobe and everything was back to normal. ‘What face?’

“The one you had on just now, obviously.”

‘Did I look weird? Sorry about that.’

Flowey narrowed his eyes but didn’t press it, not when they still looked so dazed. “Yeah, okay, whatever. Let’s just go back now. He’ll have guessed we’re snooping.”

‘I’m pretty sure he already guessed. He won’t mind too much.’

“Old guy never did have much of a sense of privacy, huh?”

The two of them left the bedroom, closing the door behind them carefully.

Chapter Text

The day of the party debuted with an awful lot of snow and screaming. Grumbling something about the lack of basic decency in the overground, Flowey blinked lead-heavy eyelids while Frisk rubbed the sleep out of their own eyes and sat up, bleary.

The shouting downstairs hadn’t stopped, but now that they were both awake they could already tell it was Undyne and Papyrus’ voices, so it just didn’t seem worth getting up for that. For a few moments – neither of them morning people – they stared into space, collecting their thoughts and awareness of their existence as a human being/flower. There was an awful lot of light blushing through the curtains, and while snow had a tendency to illuminate everything, a glance at the clock confirmed that it was, indeed, around time to get up.

“I’m going to kill them,” Flowey said half-heartedly, yawning wide enough that his face became about four-fifths mouth for a bit.

In response, Frisk flicked his petals tiredly, swinging their legs to the side of the bed and staring aimlessly at the floor. Flowey could relate. In retrospect, staying up until three in the morning playing an extremely whispered-shouting game of monopoly hadn’t been the best idea in the world. The ruins of the board were still littered around the room. Flowey maintained that that had been justified: Frisk had had no business taking all the stations and utilities.

As memory leisurely pottered back into Flowey’s mind, he groaned.

‘Remembered that it’s the party?’ Frisk wandered over to the wardrobe and began dragging clothes out.

“I’m not expected to take part, right?”

‘Mum specifically said you had to.’

“There might be room for debate there.”

‘Well, I don’t want to be around when you try.’

Flowey pouted and looked away while Frisk changed. “You never support me: some friend you are.”

‘I’m a friend dedicated to making you a better person, which includes not enabling you.’ They pulled a sweater over their head and their hair bounced free, static and bedhead making it look like a cloud.

“A little enabling would be nice, from time to time,” Flowey sulked, but he’d been given a week’s notice of the party to prepare himself and couldn’t really be bothered to argue about it anymore.

‘I enable your horrible taste in music: isn’t that enough?’

Flowey whirled his head round to glare at them while they pulled a comb through their fringe (the rest was a lost cause when it came to brushing). “Get stuffed, Frisk! My music taste is incredible, you know that!”

‘You only listen to that really loud stuff where they scream about how sad their life is,’ Frisk pointed out with a moue of distaste.

“It’s called art, Frisk! Just because you can’t handle how serious it is doesn’t mean it’s bad!”

‘Yeah, yeah, okay, I can’t handle the edge, I get it.’ Oblivious to Flowey’s spluttering, they shuffled out to the bathroom in snowman-shaped fluffy slippers and he was left to mull in the stew of late-morning light and continued raucous shouting from downstairs.

Mettaton and Napstablook arrived mid-afternoon, after the rest of the extended ‘family’ had spent a long time eating lunch and lounging around playing board or video games. Flowey was playing a stupidly intense game of Scrabble with Papyrus (an excellent and worthy opponent) and Sans (a disgrace who seemed to think puns counted as real words when they most definitely didn’t) so he wouldn’t even have noticed except that Mettaton tended to make a lot of noise.

“Toriel, sweetheart, it’s been so long!” came the ecstatic cry from the hallway, followed by a lot of very excited chattering that Toriel was clearly not expected to contribute to.

In the living room, curled up in a blanket with Frisk and Undyne watching some really shouty show, Alphys perked up. She hopped off the sofa just in time to see Mettaton slam the door open (to Toriel’s tired protests) and wheel her around in a hug.

“Alphys, darling, I’ve missed you so muuuuch!” he shouted happily. His arms seemed to be elongating just to wrap around Alphys more. Frisk quietly paused the show and sat back to watch.

“M-mettaton! It’s nice to see you, but, um, you’re kind of…really tight…”

“Oh, of course!” He put her down with far more posing than was probably necessary. “But really darling, it’s just so good to see you! Have you lost your hunch, dear? Your form is so much better!”

Embarrassed, Alphys immediately hunched down again. “Mettaton, we did talk about this, didn’t we? The…uh, the ‘making unwanted commentary on people’s insecurities’ thing?”

Mettaton slapped the side of his head prettily. “Oh, but you’re right! I’m sorry darling, it’s just in my nature. Anyway, I’ve brought some of that awful anime merchandise you wanted: it’s in the blue suitcase in the hall.”

That seemed to smooth over the situation and Alphys went out to inspect it while Mettaton continued greeting everyone enthusiastically. It was around this point that Flowey noticed (a) the rather large ghost huddling up next to Frisk, doing an excellent job of not being noticeable, and (b) that Sans was cheating at the game again.

“Get your hands off the pieces, trashbag!” he snarled while Mettaton picked Frisk up and swung them around across the room.

Under the disapproving glare of his brother, Sans shrugged cheerfully. “Hey, I just thought I’d make it a little more interesting. After all, we’re all getting board here, aren’t we?”

“Low-hanging fruit, Sans.”

“Can’t all be winners.”

Papyrus clicked his…tongue…? and crossed his arms angrily. “I can’t believe this, brother! You’re even lazy when it comes to jokes now!”

Before he could say anything back, Mettaton (still hugging a very happy Frisk) came over to the table and, after putting Frisk down with a pat on their head, started greeting again.

“Sans, it’s been so long!”

“Can’t say it felt that way.” His grin grew a little wider, against all anatomical logic.

“And your sense of humour is as bright as ever!” Mettaton switched his attentions to the more receptive brother. “And Papyrus! Now there’s a smile I’ve been longing to see! How are you, darling?”

Papyrus seemed a bit flustered to be in the presence of someone that obscenely sparkly, but he collected himself well enough. “Ah, things have been great, Mettaton! Has your tour been okay?”

“Oh, it’s been wonderful Pap, you’re so sweet to ask!” Leaving a somewhat star-struck Papyrus in his wake, he wheeled around to Flowey.

“And I…! I, um…I don’t know who this is.”

From behind Flowey’s chair (piled with cushions to get him to the right height), Frisk started signing slowly.

‘This is a new friend!’ And, to Flowey alone, ‘Better introduce yourself.’

With a deep sigh, hoping he managed to express just how little he wanted to do it, Flowey muttered “HowdyI’mFloweytheflower” and promptly looked away, down to the Scrabble board where Sans was still cheating. He swatted one of Sans’ new words away with a leaf.

“Well, isn’t that just delightful?” Mettaton said briskly. “Frisk dear, you sure make friends easily, don’t you?”

‘He’s just shy.’

“Never been shy in my life, Frisk.”

Toriel moved over with a calming, mediating presence. “Oh, now I am sure that cannot be true. As I recall, you were very shy upon meeting me for the first time.”

“Yeah, okay, but that was different.”

But Mettaton had already moved back to the living room to complain about Alphys’ choice of viewing material (‘Alphys, honey, I have so many film recommendations if you’d just take them instead of watching these silly cartoons!’). And with Asgore coming back from his inspection of the garden (still mostly frosted and snowed-over, but whatever), everyone settled back down. Toriel joined Sans’ Scrabble team and Frisk joined Flowey’s, moving the pieces for him. It had been something of an acrobatic feat before, admittedly, but Flowey was proud of his leaves’ flexibility. Didn’t see other houseplants who could pick up saucers in their leaves, now did you?

“We’re using that ‘m’ to make ‘moist’,” Flowey called, and Frisk put the pieces in place.

Sans nodded. “Neat. We’ll use that ‘sun’, then.”

“‘Sunflour’ is not a word, brother!” Papyrus pointed out loudly at the same time as Flowey shouted, “You know puns have to have a set-up, right?! You know you can’t just mash words together, right?!”

“Aw, really? Too bad.” Toriel was suppressing giggles as Sans took the pieces back and started laying down new ones perpendicular to ‘moist’. “T, H, I…Maybe thistle work better.”

Frisk clapped their hands, beaming as Toriel burst into laughter. Flowey was mildly impressed but he sure as heck wasn’t going to show it.

“While I can appreciate good work,” Papyrus said, considering his own pieces, “do all your words really have to be related to botany?”

“If I had better ideas I’d use ’em, bro, I just haven’t got-any.”

Flowey surveyed Papyrus’ ensuing frustration with a critical eye. “You really set yourself up for that one.”

“I know! That makes it worse! So does the fact that they won’t stop laughing!” He pointed a bony finger demonstratively at the offending pair.

“Yeah, sure, it’s tragic: let’s just play.”

Toriel held back her smile for a minute. “I am impressed, Flowey! You are really keeping your palm.” Sans high-fived her.

If Flowey had had veins, they would have twitched. “Do they really all have to be flower-related? Is this what I came out of the underground for? To be mocked like this?”

“It is that or bones, dear. You have to admit it is topical, at least!”

“I will admit nothing. Papyrus, take your darn turn.”

A few more turns went by without anything too dramatic happening. Frisk turned out to be terrible at Scrabble and Flowey ignored their every suggestion. Over in the living room, Asgore and a very bored Mettaton were getting a lecture on the show Alphys was persuading them to watch.

“And with that ‘a’, I’ll spell ‘pasta’!”

“Have you been waiting for that one?” Flowey asked dryly, wishing (not for the first, or last time) that he had hands and arms to prop his non-existent chin up on so he could look even more bored and judgmental.

“Yes, I have! For fifteen turns, I have carefully nurtured this word!”

“Impressive. We’ll use that ‘s’ for ‘squirm’, then.” Frisk dutifully put down the pieces.

“Um, Flowey?” Papyrus said uncomfortably, shifting in his seat a bit. Flowey realised his choice of word had been more appropriate than he’d thought.

“Yeah?”

“Do you have to use such unpleasant words? Which isn’t to say I think you’re unpleasant, of course! Or that your taste is! Just that…”

Sans snickered. “‘Squirm’, ‘moist’, ‘wriggle’, ‘tender’, ‘pus’, ‘curd’, and you even got ‘phlegm’ in there. Congrats.”

“If you’re only using plants, don’t criticise how I play.”

‘It is kind of weird.’

“Shut up, Frisk.”

Toriel whispered something in the place where Sans’ ear would have been, had he had one, and while she put down their pieces he said, “Yeah, kid. Better to just leaf him alone.” For the nth time, they burst into laughter together.

“Just so you know,” Flowey said coolly, hunching further down into his pot, “I’m never playing with you two again.”

Dinner was one of the loudest experiences Flowey had ever had, which was honestly saying something. It didn’t help that there were ten at the very-much-elongated table, and while three of them didn’t even have to eat, there was food absolutely everywhere. Flowey couldn’t reason where Toriel had been hiding it all: it was all made with magic ingredients, sure, but no amount of magic should have been able to fit that much food in such a moderately-sized kitchen.

Oh, there were pies – of course there were pies, there were always pies – but there was so much more: from tiny sandwiches to vats of stew-like sauces that filled the room up in a fog of different smells, from jewel-like preserved fruit to plates of grilled flatbreads, and the obligatory bowls of pasta as if all that hadn’t been enough. Frisk was having the time of their life, battling it out with Undyne to see who could grab the most food and shove it in their mouth the fastest. Flowey felt sick, watching them, and he didn’t even have a stomach.

Frisk held out a forkful of snail pie for him, and he couldn’t really resist that, though. It didn’t even taste that good anymore, but Frisk was back with a piece of bread piled with a bright yellow sauce for him and that took the taste away, just leaving the memories.

Politely ignoring her girlfriend’s decimation of the food (or maybe she was just used to it), Alphys was having a surprisingly passionate discussion with Sans about something Flowey couldn’t have understood even if he’d heard more than one word in three of it. Mettaton seemed to share the same opinion because he was steadily sliding his chair over to Papyrus, Toriel and Asgore’s conversation. Flowey couldn’t hear any of that one either, so he was left at the end of the table, accepting food from Frisk when they poked it at him and otherwise just glaring warily at the ghost next to him.

He’d been introduced, but Napstablook wasn’t exactly the chatty type, and it felt like it would have been too easy to tease or mock them. Which didn’t leave Flowey many options. But the ghost looked ‘happy’ enough to just watch everyone else enjoying themselves, anyway, so in the end Flowey went back to watching Frisk and Undyne too. There were worse ways to spend an evening.

When the table had finally been cleared, all the dishes shoved into the kitchen to deal with later, and even more snacks and tea brought out, there was more relaxing. Mettaton got his way and they put on one of the DVDs he’d brought and most of the family settled down to watch dramatic people doing dramatic things in dramatic lighting (none of which included Mettaton himself, and Alphys complimented him dryly on his self-control), or at least do something else with it going on in the background.

Before they could get too comfortable curled up on the couch next to Toriel, Flowey poked Frisk in the shoulder.

“It’s too hot in here: can you take me outside?” He didn’t know why he’d framed it as a question, when they tended to follow his orders good-naturedly as long as he wasn’t too demanding, but he’d already said it and there was no point in taking that back.

Frisk nodded and slid off the sofa, taking care not to step on Papyrus as they manoeuvred out of the living room and into the hall with Flowey’s pot. They slung a scarf and boots on, and trudged out into the back garden.

The difference was frankly shocking: from a house so warm and full of clashing smells it might as well have been next to the Core, to the fresh chill of the outside. Frisk wrinkled their nose at the clash, and that was one thing Flowey hadn’t missed a bit about having a flesh body: that stabbing feeling.

‘It’s fun, isn’t it?’ Frisk thought mildly, putting Flowey down on a snowy garden chair next to the frozen birdbath.

Still thinking about flesh bodies and their inconveniences, Flowey was confused. “What is?”

‘The party. Parties in general. The family. Take your pick.’

“They’re alright. Not really my thing. On account of the whole not-feeling thing, you know.”

‘Dang, that’s cold.’

It was sobering, being out of the house, anyway. There were fences around the garden but Flowey could see over them, into similarly frosty gardens. Some had more bushes and rock-hard flower beds waiting to thaw, some had fewer.

“You still have that old SAVE, don’t you, Frisk?” He didn’t look at them, even though he knew a confident smile would have made it a better sell.

‘Yeah, I’ve got it.’ They huddled their chin further into their scarf.

“Going to use it?”

‘No. Never.’

The wind picked up around them, rustling branches and sending a bird on its merry way a few gardens over.

“Never’s a long time, you know.”

‘It’s what most people have. Not being able to change the past, ever.’

“You’re not like everyone else, though.”

‘Am I not?’

“No.”

Almost absent-mindedly, they patted him on the head. Softly, rhythmically with ice-cold hands. He thought about biting them, just a bit.

The back door opened and was closed again, and there was the crunch of slippers on thin snow as Sans walked over to them.

“Taking a break?”

“What’s it to you?” Flowey said angrily, mood a lot worse now for the skeleton’s appearance. Frisk just nodded

“Smart move. Company’s nice and all, but sometimes you’ve just gotta get out.”

“You could have got out to somewhere where I wasn’t, of course. That would have been nice.”

“Dang, sure got thorns on you, haven’t you?” He looked vaguely unimpressed.

“Come closer and find out.”

‘Don’t be rude,’ Frisk signed exasperatedly.

“It’s in my nature, Frisk: you signed up for this.”

‘That’s not an excuse! Don’t do it!’

Flowey stuck his tongue out, but not really ‘at them’ seeing as they were standing behind him.

“Think you might be fighting a losing battle there, kid,” Sans pointed out quite rightly. “’Sides, it’s only me he really doesn’t like, right?”

“I can’t say I’m partial to Undyne either. Let’s be fair.”

“Eh, whatever. Same difference.”

Inside the house, some plot twist happened and there was a lot of screaming at the television followed by Mettaton’s laughter. Flowey could just about make out Undyne roaring “That’s bullshit!” before Toriel hushed her with an annoyed “They’ll hear you!”

But it was still quiet outside. There wasn’t even any sound from the neighbours.

“Still, it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Sans said, as if he was someone who needed to fill up the silence with inane chatter. “Sun’s shining. Birds are singing.”

Flowey froze, felt everything clamp up.

“Flowers are…” Sans trailed off, but not in a way that sounded like he’d meant to.

Flowey felt as if he’d been turned to stone. He hadn’t been expecting this. Not now. Frisk wasn’t reacting – but why would they? They’d never heard that dumb speech of his – and he couldn’t tell, he just couldn’t tell what was going on. He didn’t want to look round at Sans, to see the knowing and the flash of blue that he was sure had to be there. He didn’t want to move at all. He didn’t think he could.

But that was that, then: he’d remembered, or he’d always known? Flowey hadn’t wanted to think it could happen. But if it had, if they really all started to remember, then there wasn’t another choice. Curtains would open on the final, bloody act of self-defence (that was the usual plea, wasn’t it?) and he could see how it would all play out.

A vision of everything breaking, a slew of lives choked by thorns and vines, and it was everything he should have wanted. Or at least been resigned to. Or looked forward to. Nothing more interesting than massacre, right? Right?

Possibilities dropped into his mind like snowflakes piling up, and he was scared, like he’d not been for hundreds of years, since before.

Like he’d never been.

But that was stupid. Wasn’t he ready to let it all go? There shouldn’t have been any hesitation in his mind. In his heart. It shouldn’t have mattered.

Nothing should have mattered to him.

Sans cut through the panic with a laugh. “…heh. Dunno why I started that: looks like the flowers really aren’t blooming. Short as ever, aren’t you, bud?”

Flowey whipped his head around to stare at him, mouth flapping open uselessly.

(‘You’ll catch flies if you do that,’ his mother used to tell him. She didn’t have to tell Frisk.)

“…bud? You okay down there?”

Frisk was looking at him too, all worry and furrowed caterpillar-eyebrows.

“Yeah, yeah. ’M fine.”

“Catnip got your tongue?”

“That’s a terrible image and a worse pun.”

“Gotcha attitude back, though, didn’t it?”

‘Are you okay?’ Frisk asked him without signing. He thought about how easy it would be for him to kill them, potentially. He wouldn’t even have to enter into a fight with them. What would come after would come after, but that step (the first on a staircase he’d walked too many times) would be easy. He knew that.

He also knew, with absolute certainty, that he couldn’t kill them. Not them, not anymore. So he leaned back into their hands and sighed.

“I’m exhausted.”

“’s tough being a disagreeable little brat, isn’t it?” Sans said, ‘sympathetically’.

“Wow, okay, that was harsh.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Welp, that’s enough of a break for me: I’m going back inside. You coming?” He turned, hands in his pockets.

He wasn’t ready: not quite yet. “We’ll be through in a bit.”

“Suit yourselves. Don’t let him die out here, yeah, kid? I think Papyrus has actually gone and got attached to the pansy.”

Frisk saluted, but it wasn’t like Sans could see or anything: he’d gone back inside already. Silence settled down again, and Flowey breathed, completely unnecessarily. It was supposed to be calming or something, but it just felt like drinking water long after you’ve stopped being thirsty. Gulp after gulp of lukewarm liquid you don’t want, filling you up and making you feel like a water balloon. And oh, did he ever have experience with water balloons. Chara had loved them, for a bit. He’d never been good at tying them off, though, and they’d always exploded all over him.

Frisk was playing with his petals, sort of like a massage but very, very gentle and careful not to pluck any by mistake. Flowey figured that’d probably hurt. His mind was still reeling too, kind of. Reeling in the background, numb in the foreground. But there was cheerful, dim noise coming from inside, and he couldn’t really feel the cold beyond occasional bites at the inside of his mouth if he opened too wide, so he leant further back into Frisk’s hands and considered falling asleep.

Talk about anti-climactic.

Chapter Text

Flowey glowered over the dinner table in a mix of outrage and indignation.

“What do you mean you’re going back to school tomorrow?”

‘I can’t make it much clearer than I already have.’ Frisk shrugged, carefully sliding their asparagus to the side of their plate. Even magic vegetables were still bitter.

“I thought you had like a week left!”

‘Well, I don’t.’

Toriel stepped in calmly (all her asparagus already eaten) before Flowey could splutter anything else. “Come now, surely you must have overheard us speaking of it?”

Now she’d reminded him, it occurred to him that he probably had, but it wasn’t like he was going to admit that. Grumbling something inaudible, Flowey began to sulk.

“I should mention,” Toriel said carefully, “you are not going to go to school with them. By any means. At all. You will be staying here.”

“What?!” he shouted back, earning himself a glare that shut him up pretty quickly.

The skeletons had been keeping tactfully quiet throughout (unusual) but now Sans snickered (more usual). “Sucks to be you, huh? Didn’t know you were so gung-ho to leave the nest. Or pot, I guess.”

Flowey glared at him and turned back to look at Toriel imploringly. “But what am I supposed to do all day?”

“I am sure there are things you enjoy doing, are there not? Harmless things, I mean. Perhaps you might take up a hobby to pass the time. I would be glad to offer some suggestions.”

“What kind of hobbies could I possibly take up? I literally don’t have arms or legs!”

“Oh come now!” Papyrus piped up. “You managed to pick up a whole mug by yourself yesterday! Don’t sell yourself so short!”

Next to him, Sans’ grin grew wider. “Even though you are, literally.”

Flowey stuck a tongue out at him. “I don’t want to hear that from you: your feet don’t even touch the floor and you’re not growing.”

“Far as I can see, you’re not gettin’ much bigger yourself. ’part from when you do that face thing, course.”

“Don’t you have your own home? How about you stay there and never come back?”

All at the same time, Papyrus (with shouts), Toriel (with glares) and Frisk (with a forkful of asparagus to shove in Flowey’s mouth) stepped in to mediate before Flowey lost his temper again. Thrice in one day was quite enough, apparently, no matter how much Flowey argued otherwise.

“Well, anyway,” Toriel said, with a disapproving but fond smile at how shamelessly Frisk had gotten rid of their vegetables, “you will find something to do, undoubtedly. And I will be home tomorrow anyway. That is an exception, of course, and you must find ways to distract yourself that do not involve me, but at least you will be eased into it.”

So that was settled.

Flowey was doom and gloom the next morning: partly because he reasoned that if he was upset, everyone else should be, and partly because Frisk’s alarm had gone off at seven in the morning. They seemed kind of out of it too, blinking blearily all over the place as Toriel pushed orange juice and cereal their way. Human food was better for long-lasting energy anyway.

After Toriel had checked (for the fourth time) to make sure they hadn’t forgotten anything, they waved with a smile that seemed blissfully unaware of what they were getting themself into, and went to catch the bus. The house felt unpleasantly silent, reverberating with the jitters of the door closing behind them.

“Well,” Toriel said first, taking another gulp of coffee, “I have some business to take care of, so where would you like to be put to start with?”

“Frisk’s room.”

Toriel looked at him extremely pointedly. So pointedly he could practically feel the daggers.

He looked away. “Please.”

She nodded, satisfied, and smiled. “Of course.”

“I can’t believe you’re training me,” Flowey groused as she took him up the stairs.

“I believe it is commonly called ‘instilling good manners’, but call it training if you must.” Reaching the room, she put him down on the floor so he’d be able to drag himself around.

“Now, I will just be in my workroom, so shout if you need me,” she said, bending down to look him in the eyes. And then, as an afterthought, “Not too loudly, please.”

“I hear you, I hear you.”

Flowey wasn’t one to be easily bored. Impatient, yes: he’d admit to that. But boredom wasn’t such a problem, if there wasn’t anyone else around. After assessing the situation, he dragged himself to the radiator (which he couldn’t really feel, but the warmth was partly psychological) and settled down for a nap.

He was woken eventually by the sounds of Toriel doing something in the kitchen downstairs that apparently required her to slam pans together. After the initial uncertainty of who he was and what he was doing in the corner of the room, he shuffled his pot around to take stock of the bookcase. None of the interesting books were on the bottom shelf (that was where the ones Frisk had forgotten about stayed), but he managed to lever out a book of fairy tales. It was one of those artsy ones with a fake leather binding, gold paint in swirls and a stately-looking typeface on the front, but it’d have to do. Frisk liked fairy tales: they had another collection higher up (with darker endings) and Flowey knew they liked to imagine being a knight, sometimes.

He knew all of the stories back to front – how could he not, with how often Frisk referenced them in casual conversation – but he settled on Sleeping Beauty, in the end. He could understand that one, mostly because the princess stayed asleep for a good portion of it and didn’t go off doing stupid things like sacrificing herself for her people or whatever dumb excuse she cooked up. Doing it for love was another one: equally popular and stupid. And he didn’t see why the prince had to come and rescue everyone at the end: it would have been fine to just leave them, he figured. They were doing just fine by themselves, sleeping the time away.

It being an illustrated book aimed at kids who could barely read, he soon got tired heaving the pages over at the same pace he read at. So that was a no-go too, then. He took a while to think dark thoughts about the clichés in fairy tales and how much better they’d be with subtle changes (princesses who could fire magic beams at the witches and magicians and whatever, for example) before shoving the book to the side.

With Frisk having taken their music player, he couldn’t listen to his music (which was cool, no matter what Frisk said). And without them, he couldn’t play most board games, and card games like patience were more exercise than he wanted to sign up for, for someone his size. That being the case, he planted himself under the bed and thought.

He lasted two hours before calling for Toriel.

“Would you like to be moved?” she asked once he’d come back out into the open. “You have been playing very quietly by yourself: I am impressed!” He thought she was about to ruffle his petals but she held back.

“…you’re wearing an apron, aren’t you? So you’re cooking?”

“I am. Would you like to join me?”

He nodded, just about enough for her to see, mostly because he wanted to keep his eyes on the floor and not see how widely she was smiling. Unless they were from Frisk or Papyrus, wide smiles got him antsy.

“I cannot promise you will be allowed to help, but I would be delighted to have the company,” Toriel said, and Flowey nodded. That was fair. The cinnamon incident had been regrettable for everyone, and he could imagine she didn’t want it repeated.

Suitably enough, Toriel put him on the windowsill and went to wash her hands. The kitchen was nothing like Undyne and Alphys’: while theirs had been airy and bright like the sunlight had been sucked directly into it, Toriel’s gave off its own light. It was warm (almost stuffy, with the oven pre-heating), there were books of all kinds lying in every corner, and Toriel walked the floor like the queen she’d been. Even in a pink apron with ‘World’s Best Mum’ carefully written on it in marker, she commanded respect like nothing Flowey had ever seen. And then she smiled at him.

“I hope you will not mind that I have already made the pastry,” she said as she got it out of the fridge. “I think it will have chilled sufficiently by now.”

With deft movements, she put the plastic-wrapped pastry on the counter and spread a handful of flour next to it, covering the rolling pin. Before going to take the pastry out, she washed her hands again, this time in cold water without soap.

(‘To keep from shocking the butter,’ she used to tell him. It was an expression she’d rather liked, he’d thought.)

She split the ball of pastry and started rolling out the bigger half with brisk strokes, like she was crushing it beneath her.

“Why do you have to be so violent with it?” he asked.

“So as not to touch it too much. A light hand might be preferable for cakes, but a swift hand is the best for pastry.”

He nodded absent-mindedly, keeping his eyes on her movements as she rolled the pastry into a near-perfect circle. Practise makes perfect, he supposed, as if hundreds of years of practise were really worth it.

“That was something Papyrus picked up very easily,” Toriel said, taking the subject in her stride. “While I am afraid to say that Undyne is not gifted with a light hand, by any means, he at least is showing promise at this type of cooking. When he can make pastry without cracking it six ways to Sunday, I might consider revealing to him that he can make his own pasta in a similar way.” She smiled, not altogether innocently.

“Isn’t pasta dough, though?” He’d seen her make it enough: he should know. “If he’s having trouble with cracking, just give him the easier one to make. You get a lot more leeway with dough, don’t you?”

Toriel looked up at him in surprise, momentarily stopping her trimming of the edges of the circle. “I must say I did not think you would know much about cooking. Would you perhaps like to take it up as a hobby?”

Unfailing optimism annoyed him. “You’re avoiding the question, and no, I obviously can’t.” He waved his leaves demonstratively.

“Well, if you must be defeatist,” she shrugged, rolling the pastry circle onto the rolling pin and transferring it to the tin. “And there is no real reason, I suppose. But we really must get you a hobby. You know that, do you not?”

“Stop forcing respectability on me.”

“I was thinking more of relieving your boredom.” The pie filling was scraped into the crust and Toriel began working on the lid. “Is there truly nothing you wish to do? If nothing else, you could spend time with your friends until you realise what it is you are interested in.”

“What, and join Papyrus on his next knitting meet? Nah, I’ll pass on that heart-warming little endeavour.” The cold of the window was too noticeable compared to the warmth of the kitchen, even to him, and he caught a ghost shiver running down his body that couldn’t do it properly.

“Then Alphys perhaps? You might take notes for her, or at least keep an eye on her while she works. I know she does not have the healthiest of working habits.”

“You’d honestly entrust another person’s wellbeing to me?”

“It might be good for you as well.”

“It wouldn’t be.”

The lid was slung onto the pie and Toriel began crimping the border. “Well, if you will insist on being disagreeable and unhelpful, and I know you will not accept Sans or Undyne, how about we simply send you away on tour with Mettaton?”

She put the pie in the oven and slammed the door a touch too loudly. Flowey watched her stand in front of the oven for a good five seconds before she turned back to clear up the work surface. He knew this was the time when he should try and be kind; he should at least imply he was sorry as she scraped the excess flour into the bin with fast, angry strokes.

But he was so selfish.

“You didn’t mention Asgore.”

Her hands stopped for a fraction of a second. “You did not exactly seem as if you were considering my suggestions with any degree of seriousness. But if you wish, I would be more than happy for you to stay with him.”

“That’s not what I meant. You still resent him, don’t you?”

Calmly, collectedly, she washed her hands again and wrung out a cloth to wash the work-surface. “None of this is any of your business, of course.”

“Not that that’s stopped me before.” He thought he might be leering a little and he put a stop to it. He didn’t want to leer, not at this, but he knew he had to keep his tone at least somewhat taunting. “You used to be so mushy, too. All lovey-dovey and inseparable. Did that mean nothing?”

“I fail to see how you could have any idea of what we were like once.”

“I’ve heard the stories.”

“And you have heard the stories of what he has done, certainly. So perhaps you can understand my opinion.”

“Do you hate him?”

Toriel had run out of things to busy herself with. She leant against the counter, eyes on the oven even though it had a good hour left of cooking.

“Do you?” Flowey prodded.

Her face crinkled into a distant smile. “You are young. You barely understand what it is to maintain a positive relationship in the first place: I could not expect you to understand this.”

Flowey glowered at the back of her head. “I do too understand! Understanding and following are totally different things! I don’t need to, so why should I?”

“That is a conversation for a different time, I think. Probably with Frisk rather than me, too. The fact remains that I doubt you could understand what I feel for him, but it is not hate and it is not what it was.”

“Try me! Just tell me!”

“You are asking me a very personal question, you know.” Her shoulders fell, as if unloading tension. “Just accept that things change. People change as well: I cannot say for certain whether Asgore was always ‘that type of person’, or even if I was always the type I am now, but we are now and that is all that matters. Do you see?”

“It’s not exactly a difficult concept,” Flowey spat.

“Then you can appreciate that emotions change as well, and that is just as valid.” She turned to him, her smile wide and welcoming. “Whether things change the way you wished them to or not, you can only make do. There is no point in wishing for the past, so I do not. I make do with what I have, and I make sure I take nothing for granted. Not even the tentative relationship that ours has become.”

Something felt sour in Flowey’s mouth. She was just avoiding the question at every turn, but he could play at derailing the conversation too. “That’s great: you’re off making peace with yourself and all, leaving all those children by the wayside, right? It sounds like you didn’t even care about them at all.”

Toriel looked at him sharply. “Where on earth did that come from? Of course I cared for them. I think of them often, but there is no sense in dwelling on the past, as I said.”

This wasn’t going how he’d wanted, but he’d be hard-placed to word what he had wanted, so when he spoke again it was with a fresh dose of acid. “I can’t believe you keep talking about ‘positive relationships’ and ‘making friends’ and all that rubbish when you’ve just built a happy little home life for yourself and Frisk on the bodies of all the kids you let die. More than that, you don’t even care, do you?!”

He thought she might hit him (he hoped), but she didn’t even turn around.

In a measured voice, she said, “If you cannot take the time to listen to what I say – as I did clearly say I cared and still care for them – then I see no reason why I should do so for you.”

It didn’t seem like he could speak back to that.

‘I just want to know why’ or ‘How can you keep on going without them’ or ‘Why are you allowed to move on’ all seemed like they fit the script, but Flowey didn’t want to read his lines anymore. He felt tired, drained, and he wanted Frisk back. He was sick of being reminded all the time that he clearly couldn’t let go of a past that wasn’t even his. Not rightly his, anyway. Not really.

It wasn’t fair that he had to suffer through everything Asriel had left behind, had to deal with all his stupid emotional baggage (and Flowey couldn’t even understand it to start with), but he got nothing from it. It wasn’t his. Nobody was going to welcome him home like they would Asriel. All he had were repercussions and consequences and frustration that he took out on everyone.

He didn’t think he’d ever felt so angry about it all before.

The two of them stayed silent for almost a quarter of an hour before Toriel started talking again. It was just small talk: going over how she was going to the local university the next day, what she was going to do, how false-accommodating the man she’d spoken to had been, all the usual stuff Flowey couldn’t have cared about if he tried.

She suggested he could try taking night classes – “Of culinary arts, perhaps, or botany” – and the way she said it was so clearly waiting for him to yell at her for it that he did. Like he’d ever want to go to university. He didn’t even go to school: he didn’t need that kind of hell in his life.

And then Frisk came back from school, saving them both from each other’s company. They bounded into the kitchen (after shrugging off their bag and coat and dumping them on a chair), dragging that one wingless wyvern kid with them.

They looked a bit surprised to see Flowey there, but took it in their stride. ‘Oh, didn’t expect you here. But good timing! Meet my friend,’ they gestured to the kid (who had said an enthusiastic hello to Toriel and was trying to take off their shoes without overbalancing).

Flowey hid his relief at their interruption under a nice layer of moodiness. “Yeah, hi, I’m Flowey.”

The kid’s eyes (already the size of saucers) widened. “Yo!!! You really are a talking flower! That’s so cool!”

“And you really are a loud kid with no arms, looks like Frisk really wasn’t lying. Who’d have thought it.”

The monster kid didn’t seem to take offence. “Dude, this is so neat! Can you move your leaves, or your stem, or your roots, or,” they sucked in a breath and whispered conspiratorially, “can you photosympathise?”

“It is ‘photosynthesise’, my child,” Toriel corrected kindly as she began to get glasses and milk out, patting Frisk’s cheek as a ‘welcome back’.

‘We just learnt that today,’ Frisk explained, looking altogether far too smug. ‘But can you?’

The kids looked at him expectantly, and even Toriel seemed interested as she poured out drinks for them.

“No, I can’t photosynthesise,” Flowey snapped. “First of all, I’m a monster plant, not a plant, and second of all, I was living in the underground with the rest of you until very recently. You know, the underground, with no sunlight whatsoever? Is that ringing a bell?”

“Dude! You’re so right! So are you like, half a flower and half a monster? Or what’s the deal?”

“How about we go into the living room?” Toriel suggested, holding a tray of milk and cinnamon rolls shaped like rabbits. “Frisk, could you bring Flowey?”

Frisk happily obliged and Flowey set about trying to think of some explanation for what he was that would be both utterly wrong and likely to make the monster kid say ‘Duuude!!!!!’ a lot more. He thought he might include magic beams.

Chapter Text

For a few seconds, Flowey thought he was hallucinating. He stayed very still, keeping his eyes firmly on one outstretched leaf until his eye sockets began to hurt. Then (only after very careful verification of the situation) he screamed.

“FRISK! Get up here right now!”

There was a satisfying screech of a chair downstairs, then the thundering of two pairs of feet as Frisk and Toriel rushed upstairs. Frisk ran straight to him and Toriel looked around the room for danger.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ They didn’t even bother signing.

With barely repressed horror, Flowey swallowed. “There’s…there’s a greenfly on me.  I’ve got greenfly. I’ve actually got…I can’t believe this. This can’t be happening to me.”

Frisk boggled for a second and then burst into silent laughter. Hiding a smile badly, Toriel sat down on the bed.

“My child, you made it seem as if it were the end of the world.”

He was too busy glaring at his leaves to bother glaring up at her, but he hoped she knew he would have. “Well it might as well be for me! These things eat plants, you know! Ugh, I can’t believe this! What's next?! Slugs?! Rabbits?!!”

‘Rabbits don't eat magic flowers. It's unhealthy.’ Frisk nodded like it made all the sense in the world.

 “I don’t care about the rabbits’ health! I care about how my ‘loving family’ apparently thinks my suffering is a joke!”

But Toriel was already looking at her watch. “Frisk dear, you are going to be late.”

Frisk jumped up at the reminder and hurried downstairs. Flowey couldn’t believe his life.

“Are you just going to leave me like this?!”

‘Yes,’ came their distant reply, telepathy still working wonders. ‘Mum can get you some bug spray. I’ve got some jaws to drop at show and tell.’

Feeling spiteful, Flowey called back, “I bet ‘Mum’ won’t like you bringing in those scales Undyne shed.”

Toriel – who’d been waiting patiently for them to finish the conversation she could only hear half of – started, and then ran down the stairs after Frisk to argue with them. Considering how Frisk had been trying to wheedle one of Sans’ hands off him (which he’d been up for, actually, but in the end they couldn’t detach it), Flowey figured she should count herself lucky.

“Well,” Toriel sighed when she got back from sending Frisk off (with the scales). “I suppose I had best take you to someone who knows more about plants than I do.”

Flowey nodded absent-mindedly, still shaking his leaf and willing the offending bug to leave. It seemed to be enjoying itself and he loathed it. “Asgore then?”

Toriel nodded. “I will drive you on my way to work, so I hope you are prepared to spend the day.”

Asgore looked delighted to see him. It made a change, Flowey supposed. He was used to something more in the ‘frown and sigh of distaste’ line, but smiles worked too. After Toriel had briskly explained the situation and driven off a bit too quickly, Asgore brought him into the house, but didn’t stop, instead moving straight through into the glass-walled veranda.

“I hope you will not mind,” he was saying, “but I already have visitors with me: we were doing some work in the garden.”

He stopped in the door between the veranda and said garden, and – at the sight of Undyne throwing some pretty hefty-looking gardening tools into the earth for some reason - corrected himself. “Well, I was doing some work.”

Undyne turned around from where she was still stabbing a plot of apparently empty earth, and there was the expression Flowey had come to know and love on people who’d just realised they were going to be blessed with his company. In her case, paired with a nice curl of the lip.

“What’s he doing here?” In giant, earth-covered boots, she stomped over to them.

“Flowey has, ah, a slight problem that I might be able to help with,” Asgore said happily, holding out Flowey’s pot in exactly the least helpful way possible.

Undyne leered down at him. He glared back.

“So what’s the issue, punk?”

“None of your business, scaly.”

“Yeah? How about I try and- wait. Are those greenfly? Do you have greenfly?! They’re all up your stalk, oh my god!”

“They’re what.”

“You have greenfly, oh my god. This is hilarious!”

“Go soak your head and die!” he called out bitterly, but she was laughing too hard to care. Asgore watched her, fond but a little pained, and gently put Flowey down on a garden table that was mostly covered with packets of seeds and trowels.

“Now,” he said in a gentle voice as he knelt to be at Flowey’s height, like he was about to bandage up a grazed knee, “the good news is that you certainly do not have many aphids on you.”

“I’ve got some. That’s enough,” Flowey said in a strained voice, still shooting dark thoughts Undyne’s way.

“Yes, I quite understand that it must be uncomfortable.”

And it was, really, and Flowey had been doing his best not to think about that, but now of course he couldn’t stop thinking about how they were literally drinking the sap from him.

“Do something,” he said. “Please.”

Asgore nodded, calm and collected and very, very fluffy. “By all means. I am simply a little puzzled: aphids do not usually hatch until spring. It is very early for them yet.”

“Maybe they got attracted to his rotten personality,” Undyne called out unhelpfully. She was back to stabbing the ground in something that Flowey finally realised was supposed to be turning the soil.

“Drop dead,” he said half-heartedly.

“Not before you wilt!”

“Please,” Asgore said. Then, getting back on subject, “There are a number of ways of ridding oneself of greenfly: the simplest is to do away with each one individually. There is also soapy water, or a variety of other sprays which might help. Do you have a preference?”

Systematically killing each and every one of them had some appeal, and Flowey was just saying as much when the veranda door slid open behind him and there was a squeak. He turned.

“Oh!” Alphys pushed her glasses up with a shaking hand. “I wasn’t…I wasn’t expecting you to be here.”

“Surprise visit.”

“He’s got greenfly,” Undyne called gleefully. Flowey allowed himself a silent curse on rotten fish and their rotten, horrible personalities.

“Oh, that doesn’t sound nice.” Alphys shuffled around to look closely at his stalk. Flowey was about to say something about people finally being civil to him, but then she wrinkled her nose in disgust and he decided against it.

“That’s…quite a swarm you’ve got there.”

Undyne cackled.

“Yes,” Asgore said thoughtfully. “I was just thinking…Alphys, could you brush them off, please?”

“M-me?”

“I fear my fingers might be too big,” he smiled apologetically.

“Oh, yeah…that makes sense.” She nodded, and asked Flowey, “You don’t mind?”

“I’m going to be straight up with you: at this point I wouldn’t care if you burned them off.”

“Um. Alright, then.” Looking the very picture of discomfort, she flicked at his stalk and the undersides of leaves, waiting for Asgore to squish the newly de-housed greenfly with a piece of paper before flicking again.

After a stressful minute or so (punctuated by Undyne still decimating the soil, and why she could just use a hoe like a normal person would, Flowey had no idea), Alphys straightened up.

“I…I think that’s all of them.”

Asgore straightened up significantly further. “Thank you! With luck, that should take care of them for the time being.”

Flowey stiffened. “They’ll come back?”

Asgore rubbed his hands together a little awkwardly. “Well, there is always the possibility…It might be wise to make sure none of your houseplants, barring present company, have any.”

Flowey was tempted to grumble and complain some more, but Asgore was looking at him like he was expecting some ‘good and decent person’ reaction and it felt…rude to not give him that.

With the utmost inner disgust, Flowey thanked them both.

After that, there wasn’t much to do. He could hardly help out, so he just sat and watched the three of them, occasionally calling out insults when it suited him (but only to Undyne). She just responded with cheerful insinuations of where she was going to bury him.

Alphys was sitting by the miniature greenhouse, preparing rows of tiny pots for the nursery, when she yelped. Undyne looked up sharply from her most recent destruction of perfectly good earth. Flowey, who was taking advantage of Asgore’s temporary absence to push seed packets off the table, looked at them disinterestedly.

“You okay?” Undyne shouted across the garden, far too loudly.

“A-ah, yeah, I just…haha, I just managed to cut myself on the shears a bit…”

In a second, Undyne was next to her, after somersaulting half the garden. Somersaulting. A distance that would have taken her no time at all to just sprint across like any normal monster. Flowey couldn’t even react to that, but he somehow felt that she had to be rubbing it in his face.

Not that she was paying any attention to him at all: she was intent on her girlfriend, holding up Alphys’ hand and frowning at the bleeding. They were close enough that their foreheads almost touched. Alphys had gone bright red for whatever reason and she seemed about to bolt, but Undyne whipped out a handkerchief from her pocket before Alphys got a chance. And then she was wiping away what little blood there was, wrapping the handkerchief around Alphys’ hand, tying it off neatly and kissing it.

Alphys made a strangled sound.

“That any better?” Undyne asked, also kind of red in the face (not a good look with the blue, in Flowey’s esteemed opinion). Her voice was almost too low to hear from over on the garden table, but hear it Flowey did: heaven forbid he should be spared this suffering too.

“Y-yeah…” Alphys tested her hand out, then took Undyne’s in her own and managed a smile. Undyne was just grinning back when Alphys leaned up for a kiss, her eyes screwed up tight and her body visibly shaking. When she pulled away, Undyne looked breathless and…kind of hungry?

“Thanks,” Alphys said croakily.

“N-no problem.” Undyne’s eyes were glued to her girlfriend’s.

“I may scream,” Flowey informed the world at large.

They didn’t pay him any attention (he hadn’t thought they would), just kept looking at each other in that weird way like there wasn’t anyone in the world but them. Flowey wished they would leave, but suspected life would never be that kind to him.

And then, against all odds, they did: hand in hand, rushing to the back of the garden that was filled with waxy laurel bushes and the skeletons of small trees, hiding them from view. And Flowey was left in an empty but heavily disrupted garden; the greenhouse door was open, pots were scattered about in different stages of preparation, the ‘ploughed’ beds looked like something had erupted out of them, and the thin grass beneath the table was covered in seed packets.

Asgore didn’t seem too taken aback when he saw it all. If anything, he looked amused.

“I imagine they will not want me looking for them?” he asked.

Flowey gagged theatrically, and Asgore took it as the answer it was, laughing.

“They have done this before: I am quite used to it. I shall just have them clean it up afterwards. Now, will you come in for lunch? I know you cannot eat, but I would appreciate the company.”

“I can eat,” Flowey said in a way that hopefully transmitted the essence of a shrug. “I don’t have to, but I can.”

“All the better, then!” Asgore beamed, picking Flowey up in hands that seemed too gentle to have ever harmed another.

For how little work he’d actually done, Flowey was exhausted that night. Undyne (unlike Alphys) hadn’t been at all tired out or mollified by her little ‘excursion’: if anything she’d just got more irritating and prone to doing dumb stuff to look cool. While gardening. The leap from the garden wall had been pretty wicked, Flowey would admit, but the rest was all stupid and she had to know it.

He was thinking about that – wondering in what delightful terms he’d call her an idiot next time, wondering when Asgore might make good on his promise to invite Flowey back (not that he needed an invitation) – when he heard something from the bed.

It was the middle of the night: maybe an hour and a half since Frisk had turned the lights out, claiming (like a wuss) that it was a school night and they couldn’t stay up any longer playing poker. The alarm clock was ticking on, the hands lit up with a soft electric glow, and Flowey looked over it to the bed from where he was set on the bedside table.

Frisk was curled up to the point where it looked painful. Their hands were grappling at their throat, white scratches scribbled along their neck, and their knees were pulled up to their chest tightly, feet moving in spasms every few seconds. They were whimpering, and as Flowey watched, their hands moved shakily to the sides of their head, as if to block out sound.

“Frisk,” he said, unsure of what was happening. He’d seen them have nightmares before – his nights were restless enough too – but this wasn’t like that.

Their breathing was heavy, unnaturally so.

“Frisk!” he almost shouted, dragging himself over to the edge of the table. “Wake up!”

They stilled, hands frozen in claws over their ears for just a moment, two, three, and then they lowered them. They opened their eyes to look up at him, and for a second, from the way the dim light hung over them, he thought their eyes flashed red.

Before he could blink, their eyes were theirs again, and they looked fragile enough to break with a single misplaced word.

“Are you okay?” Flowey heard himself say.

Their cheeks were flushed, he thought, and they rolled over to lie on their back. Finally they began to breathe properly.

‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

“That’s the worst lie you’ve ever told.”

‘I’m fine.’ Their mouth curled up in a smile that couldn’t have looked more forced if they’d tried.

“Nightmare?”

‘Something like that.’

“You can…you can tell me, if something’s bothering you. I won’t give you any worthless pity or anything. I’ll just listen.”

Their smile was genuine then, crinkling up the corners of their eyes, seeping into their body as they curled up again, gently this time. Happily. ‘Thank you, Flowey.’

They didn’t say anything after that, though. They just breathed steadily, so carefully that Flowey didn’t even notice when they fell asleep again. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter to him. They could have nightmares every night for the rest of their life for all it meant to him. He didn’t care at all.

He was a terrible, terrible liar.

Chapter Text

Flowey didn’t really understand human bodies. Oh, he got the whole ‘very weak’, ‘very fragile’, ‘filled with determination’ stuff, he just didn’t understand how Frisk – a kid who’d walked through the Underground and its entire planet’s worth of climates without getting sick – could be taken down by a cold.

In blatant mockery of his disbelief, they sneezed heavily and hugged their blanket tighter around them (the big fuzzy one Toriel kept for special comforts). Like a cuckoo from a clock, Papyrus’ hand shot out and held the box of tissues for them again and they took one with a grateful sniffle.

They might as well just have been a pile of blankets and soft pyjamas huddled on the sofa (and it had been enough of a pain getting them out of bed and into the living room where they could be watched). School was out of the question, of course, and Toriel had had to go to work. With a frankly insulting lack of trust, she’d declined Flowey’s offer of babysitting (politely, and more insulting for it), and now he had to suffer through the idiot skeletons’ attempts at keeping a very silent, very sick kid happy.

So all in all, Flowey wasn’t having a good day.

“I know you think you’re very clever, Sans,” he said in a voice left measured and tired from stress he refused to acknowledge, “but you can stop using only flower-related words. It’s completely unnecessary. There’s literally no reason to do this. It’s not even funny, it’s just losing you the game.”

The skeleton shrugged with a smile that made Flowey want to punch his lights out (his usual smile, as it so happened).

“Well, it’s keeping the kid happy, right? Seems like reason enough to me.”

Flowey vaguely considered saying something back but he couldn’t be bothered. Papyrus – self-proclaimed master of Scrabble and general wordsmithery – wasn’t even looking at the board. The whole place felt unnaturally quiet and solemn, punctuated by snuffles and crinkles of fuzzy fabric.

On second thought, Flowey wanted to punch the common cold’s lights out. As many lights as he could, shatter them all and do whatever it took to get Frisk exasperated at him again: anything but this. They’d never looked this wan. Every so often they’d close their eyes in concentration or hide their face in blankets, like they were in pain but didn’t want anyone to see.

As if it wasn’t obvious.

He took his turn, spelling out ‘detoxx’, but the others didn’t call him out on it. There were already four spelling mistakes on the board anyway: it would have been hypocritical. It also would have taken at the very least some degree of attention and no one was really in the mood for that.

Perhaps Frisk was actually onto something when they told him that misery wasn’t fun. He’d have to ask them about that, later.

“Frisk!” Papyrus said too loudly. “Do you need some more medicine? Some more blankets? A cooling cloth? I, the greatest of your many great friends, would be delighted to bring you anything you need!” His face fell a fraction. “So…don’t hesitate to ask! If you need anything...!”

They shook their head with minute little movements and his face fell even further.

“Bro, Tori left some soup out, right? Might be about time to go heat that up, yeah?”

Papyrus nodded and sprung up, not even trying to hide his worry (his face was practically dyed in it) as he went to the kitchen.

Flowey scoffed, pushing a piece back and forth on the table with the end of a leaf. “Stupid. It’s just a stupid cold. They’re going to be fine in like two days, tops.”

Sans didn't reply (too engrossed in the table and his own hoodie pockets, apparently) and Frisk wasn’t exactly in a position to say anything. They weren’t even talking to Flowey directly.

He’d wanted to ask them about that…that incident from a few nights before, ask them what had happened and how he could make sure it never happened again, but they’d been ill the next morning and then it had just got worse. It wasn’t as if there was anyone he could or would tell, either. Especially about the memories it had stirred in him. Because those were stupid, just as stupid as this cold.

Neither would come to anything.

“It’s so stupid,” he said again, his voice growling a little in his throat. “Everyone’s acting like it’s the end of the world just because a healthy kid caught a bug. It’s going to be fine. You didn’t even need to come over: they’d have been fine with just me.”

The letter piece splintered against the table and Sans looked up.

“Uh...you want to calm down a little there, bud?”

“I don’t need to calm down: I’m just annoyed that everyone’s acting like this is the end or something! For crying out loud, why is everyone so darn gloomy?! You think that’s going to help?!”

The piece broke, sending shards across the coffee table, and Flowey was about to pull another one over when he was suddenly at the wrong height.

Papyrus smiled down at him. “Flowey! If you’re not too busy, you should come and cook with me!” The invitation had none of the energy it should have and he didn’t wait for an answer anyway. Flowey let himself be carried away, still seething with frustration.

‘Be good,’ Frisk told him. He looked at them sharply but they hadn’t moved. They’d barely even sounded like themself.

Papyrus put him down on the kitchen counter.

“How hard can warming up soup be?” Flowey grumbled, sinking down until his lower petals were brushing the earth in his pot.

“No challenge at all! It’s simply more fun with friends!”

“Oh sure, fine. Whatever.”

The soup was already in a pan and Flowey watched Papyrus go through the trials of putting it on the hob and turning on the heat.

The low buzz of the hob filled the room. Papyrus was doing that thing where he clacked his fingers against the bones of his thighs in something that had absolutely no semblance to any song Flowey had ever heard. It was so irritating. The whole thing was ridiculously irritating: everything was irritating him, even down to the small pile of dishes in the corner that hadn’t been put away. It all made him want to scream, to get big and really roar, to let go and rip someone’s head off.

But Frisk had told him to be good.

“Hey,” he said after a huge heave of breath, “they’re going to be fine.”

The tapping stopped. “Of course they are! Nothing, but nothing could take down someone I believe in so much! There’s nothing to worry about!” His voice sounded tinny, and Flowey sighed again.

“They’re really going to be fine. Stop fretting or I’m going to get a headache too and let me tell you, nobody is going to want to be in the same house as me then.” He snickered at the thought. “Not that most people want to now, but you know what I mean.”

“That’s not true!” In his rush to put a stop to any self-deprecation in his immediate vicinity, Papyrus seemed to perk up. “I’m positive that nobody-”

“Yeah, okay, thanks but I didn’t come here for a pep talk. I don’t need any pity, okay?”

Rather than affronted or put out, Papyrus looked confused. “But this isn’t pity. It’s the truth! Everybody cares about you, everybody believes in you! As well they should: you’re my friend, after all!”

Flowey had to take a few useless breaths before putting the hopelessly optimistic idiot in his place. “Look, I’m not stupid, okay? I get that you like me, for whatever reason, I get that Frisk likes me, I get that Toriel puts up with me, and fine, I guess maybe Asgore’s fine with me too. Everyone else hates me. That’s just common knowledge.”

A slow smile spread onto the skeleton’s face. “But that’s not true at all! Alphys definitely doesn’t hate you, Undyne says she thinks you’re neat, my-”

“Wait, hold up: Undyne said what?!” He laughed coarsely. “I didn’t take you for a bad liar, Papyrus, but that’s just awful. How could you expect me to believe that?”

“You should believe it because it’s the truth!” he replied happily, turning round to stir the soup absent-mindedly. “They might not be very good at showing it…but everyone cares about you! Because you’re our friend! And…and Frisk’s our friend too, so while of course we have the utmost faith and belief in them that they’ll get better…” –he deflated a little- “…we’re still worried.”

“Oh.”

“Do you see?”

“Of course I see: how stupid do you think I am? You’re still definitely lying, though, about the ‘everyone likes me’ thing. That’s just idiotic.”

“Not at all! In fact, we can go and ask my brother right now!” Turning off the heat and apparently deaf to Flowey’s spitting protests, he carried the pot back into the living room.

“Sans!”

“Yeah, bro?” He looked decidedly too relaxed to be natural. It looked like Frisk’s blankets had been rearranged, badly.

“Flowey, with his admirable humility-”

Flowey snorted.

“-refuses to believe that he’s our friend! You should probably reassure him.”

Sans looked as if he would have blinked if he’d been able to. Then he shrugged. “Wouldn’t say you’re the best-liked around the place, but you’re part of the family, right? Sure, we’re used to you.”

Flowey glared. “Do you give all your ‘friends’ thinly veiled threats by ripping up flowers in front of them?”

“One time, bud.”

“Five.”

“Eh, okay. But nah, most of us think you’re fine. Swell, even. The bee’s knees. Or the bee’s feed in this case, I guess.”

“That one’s awful and you know it.” It wasn’t even bad or good enough to get the groans or splutters of protest they usually did. That was probably mostly down to the atmosphere, if Flowey was being generous, which he wasn’t, so no, it was just a lazy joke.

But it made Frisk smile, a little. They were mostly hidden by blankets so Flowey didn’t even know if the other two had seen it, but it was there. So he sighed and let it go.

“Let’s just finish the game,” he said.

“Or!” Papyrus put him down carefully. “We could have some of my magnificently prepared soup and then finish the game!”

“Sounds like a plan.” Sans got up and went to the kitchen, slippers shuffling against the floor, and his brother quickly followed him.

So Flowey was left alone with the invalid. He watched them, trying to pretend their face wasn’t crumpled up in pain.

They slept through most of the afternoon, only waking up when Toriel came back. She carried them upstairs and put them to bed, brought them dinner and came down with most of the food still there.

Flowey and the skeletons got through about twenty games of Scrabble, all riddled with rule violations.

But that had to end too, and the brothers left after dinner. Flowey stayed in the living room with Toriel for as long as he could bear (not long, not with that silence weighing down on both of them), and then he asked her to take him upstairs.

The bedroom was so quiet.

He stayed on the floor because he didn’t want to see their face. Colds weren’t supposed to hurt. He’d known a few, he’d seen people go through them, and even fevers weren’t supposed to hurt like Frisk seemed to be hurting. It wasn’t fair. They didn’t deserve this. He didn’t care – of course he didn’t care, why should he care? – but it still stung. They hadn’t signed in days; they hadn’t spoken to him in days apart from that one line.

‘Be good’.

He was trying, wasn’t he?! He was doing his best, better than he’d ever had to before and he was trying so hard.

It didn’t even feel like trying hard anymore, it just…felt like he was doing what he ‘should’. Be a good kid. Do good things. Betray everything you’re supposed to be, just to make others happy. He didn’t want to, but Frisk made him want to, they made him want to so badly that it didn’t feel like it needed any effort at all.

He wanted them to praise him again. He wanted them to smile and show all their happiness on their face, baring it all because that meant other people would understand, even people like him. Even things like him. He wanted…he wanted them to talk to him again, tell him that they were going to be okay and that everything could go back to how it was before, before this stupid bug. Or virus. Or headache. Or whatever it was. He wanted so much and he had no idea how to get any of it.

He hadn’t understood them, all those months before. How could he possibly have understood why they kept sparing him? It didn’t make any tactical sense (not that he was the best at tactics – he wasn’t the best at anything, really). It would have made so much more sense if they’d given up on him completely.

He thought he might understand now, though. He thought so (wasn’t sure, couldn’t be sure), because he thought that maybe, possibly, just supposing that they were in the way of what he wanted – what he really wanted, with all his heart, as if he could possibly ever want something that badly – he wouldn’t kill them. He wouldn’t even try. They were worth that.

He looked up at the bed, at the unmoving pile of blankets. It would have been nice to see them breathe, maybe, but it was too late for that.

Something was wrong, anyway. He felt all funny. Not like anything he’d felt for a long, long time, and it hurt. He dragged himself across the floor to lean against the chest of drawers, looking up at the ceiling. Alphys had given them some luminescent stars some weeks back and they were stuck all over the place. They weren’t half as good as the stones in Waterfall: they looked fake and too neon to be realistic.

Frisk had liked them. They’d laughed when he’d criticised them: they’d told him that it didn’t matter if the stars looked fake because they still shone. Apparently that was enough.

There was a plastic chess set shoved under the bed that he could see, too: he half-considered getting it out and playing against himself for a bit. It wasn’t like he was sleepy. But he wasn’t in the mood at all. It was probably like the feeling of having a semi-stomach ache, when you knew something was wrong but not so wrong as to keep you bedridden or anything. Just slightly wrong.

Wrong enough.

“Frisk,” he said dully, knowing he wouldn’t get an answer. “You need to get better. Everyone’s worried about you and it’s sickening, I can’t stand it. I hate it.”

They’d never actually complained when he made everything about himself, he remembered. They should have told him not to. He wouldn’t have stopped, but they should have.

“I don’t like seeing you like this. You’re not weak enough to get pulled under by some dumb illness, right? You defeated me: there’s no way you could be that weak. And I mean, I know you’re not going to die or anything stupid like that, but…”

He wondered how many times they’d died. They’d never told him how many times they’d had to rely on their save files, and he’d never asked. It wasn’t the type of thing you asked someone: they’d certainly never pried about how many times he’d brought himself to the edge of death. It was just common courtesy not to, or something.

Not that he knew much about that.

“Not to mention,” his voice sounded so lofty, so annoying, “all your friends are worried sick, you know? You’re just being rude by doing this to them. They all want you back. I want you back.”

He’d read a lot of stories since he’d been taken from the Underground. A lot of them had the same sort of dramatic climax: the hero had to give up everything to save the one they loved, or they had to sacrifice them and then never recovered from the grief. Stupid things like that. They didn’t make sense to him: he couldn’t understand how you could ever love someone so much that you’d give up everything for them. He didn’t even understand how you could love someone enough that you wouldn’t drop them the second you needed to save face. To keep your dignity. To keep the illusion of power.

But there were tears budding in the corners of his eyes now, and god, he just wanted his friend back.

“I miss you,” he said, his voice cracking and breaking into something so much quieter than it should have been. “I want you back, Frisk. I’d probably do most things to get you back, and Frisk, that’s so, so scary. I’m scared, you know? I can’t do this! I don’t understand, I can’t understand, I just can’t! You’re my best friend, okay? Would you get better if I just said that over and over? I know I’m gross, I’m awful, I’m horrible and I don’t care, but if it’ll get you back, I’d try to be kind! I’d fail, but I’d try! Just…get better. Please.”

His mouth felt like a mess of words he should have said, should say, but none of them mattered anyway. Frisk wouldn’t hear them. They wouldn’t even hear if he told them he loved them.

And that might be true, he thought.

As if crying had drained him, he felt his eyelids growing heavy, his vision swimming in front of him. It usually took him so long to go to sleep, but he supposed he should be thankful that he could just drop off and not think about this anymore.

With his head full of confusion, Flowey fell asleep.

And the next morning, against all logic and reason, Asriel woke up.

Chapter Text

For a long few seconds, Asriel completely forgot to breathe. Then his lungs (and whoa boy, he had lungs again) started to burn and he sucked in a few hasty breaths, trying to get used to the whole oxygen-in, carbon dioxide-out thing. Then – and only then – did he allow himself to panic.

It shouldn’t have happened! Why had it happened?! Why was he back? Why was he alive? Why could he suddenly feel everything again?! It was like he’d been swimming in emptiness for years (for so many years) with someone else’s experiences and emotions poured into his mind like an IV drip substitute for his own, and then he’d been unceremoniously dragged back, spluttering and choking and shouting.

Actually, shouting didn’t sound too bad. He considered indulging in a bit of it, just to test the old lungs out, but then he remembered Frisk, still sleeping. He didn’t want to wake them.

…

Frisk.

He leapt up off the floor – and oh, he had legs, he had feet, he had arms with muscles to push himself up with! – to stand by their bed. They were still there. They were still breathing. They didn’t seem in any pain.

Asriel sighed in relief. But he really did have to wake them up…Normally he wouldn’t have, even though the morning light was pouring through the curtains, but this wasn’t exactly ‘normal’, and…and he wanted to see them smile through his own eyes. He wanted to talk to them.

With the gentlest of pushes, he patted their shoulder, whispering their name. The feeling of their skin under his fur was utterly unreal to him, just as much as the weight and balance of this body he hadn’t had for so, so long. It shouldn’t have made a difference – it wasn’t like he’d been in a different body – but his mind was saturated with the Other’s memories of something much lighter, less mammal.

He didn’t want to think about that.

Slowly, Frisk’s eyelids began to flutter open, their thick eyebrows furrowing as if in concentration, and he waited for them, wringing his hands. He hoped they wouldn’t be too surprised. He hoped they were okay. He hoped…oh gosh, he hoped so many things.

Biting his lip, he waited for them to finish yawning and look at him with their-

With…their…

Red eyes.

He sprang back from the bed like he’d been stung.

“Cha…ra…?” he said hollowly, as if he could possibly mistake those eyes, even in the wrong face (not gaunt enough, not pallid enough), the wrong body (not skinny enough, not awkward enough). It couldn’t be them, could it? But it wasn’t as if there was a shortage of impossible things happening, so he let hope flood through him, washing away all the lingering dark and disappointing thoughts that clung to his memory of them. None of that mattered if they were here: he’d forget them all if they were just here, with him.

For a second, he waited, holding his breath. Sleepily, Chara blinked, yawned, and finally looked at him. Horror ripped through their face and continued to rip through every second of tense silence that passed between them while they waited for the other to say something.

Then Chara swore.

“C-Chara?!” Asriel ran to them, hands hovering uselessly over their shoulders as they continued to swear colourfully and vigorously. “Are you okay?! Are you hurt, are you…you…It’s been so long, Chara, I…gosh, I…”

He felt tears welling up in the corners of his eyes and hurried to brush them away.

The words wouldn’t stop coming, though, just as Chara wouldn’t stop cursing. “I thought I’d never see you again, I thought…I was so scared! I never wanted to lose you, and then I thought I’d lost you forever and we’d never see each other again, but…but you’re here and…Chara, what’s wrong? Does it hurt? Just…just talk to me, please…”

Their eyes (he’d missed them, he’d missed them so much) were wild when they looked at him. They stopped their increasingly inventive tirade and, with arms wrapped tight around their body, they opened their mouth to say something to him when the door creaked open.

They both looked over, Chara still so tightly curled in on themself that they might as well have been half the size. Asriel felt the strength drain away from him.

“Mum…?” he said, his voice trembling.

Toriel didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure she was able to: he certainly couldn’t find words. He wasn’t even sure where he found the energy to run to hug her before they both started crying.

Asriel spent a lot of the day crying. He cried in Toriel’s arms for a long time, far longer than it took her to sniff up her tears and ask him questions he couldn’t answer. She couldn’t stop smiling, but he knew there was fear underneath it all. If anything, that just made him cry more. He was such a crybaby. He knew that (he was ashamed of that), but it didn’t stop him: just when he thought he’d managed to stop, he’d smile and feel everything again – the ache in his cheeks, the hot stinging in his eyes, the helpless laughter in his throat – and the tears would come back. He couldn’t believe it.

Chara barely said anything. He couldn’t tell what was going through their mind at all, but they hugged Toriel stiffly and bit their lip and hid under the covers. They did squeeze his hand back when he held theirs, though, and that was enough for now. He was overcome with shock too: he could barely imagine what it was like for them. And…and maybe he was a little worried, just a little, but he didn’t let himself dwell on it. There’d be time enough for them to talk it out later, he knew, so it was okay if Chara didn’t want to see anyone for a few hours. That was normal: that was how Chara was, and he’d missed them so much that he’d take that part of them too, and be grateful.

And then Toriel called Asgore over and his look of spiderweb-fragile disbelief when he saw his son brought Asriel to tears again. He’d never hugged so much in his life, never been hugged so much, and each time he took all the feelings in like they were gifts, things he hadn’t felt in the flesh since…since then.

More and more people were called and it was so confusing and bewildering and emotional that Asriel was relieved his parents had agreed to keep Chara a secret for now – to let them rest upstairs and not have to deal with it all. He could have used their help for the explanation, but he wasn’t going to complain. He really shouldn’t complain, even though his hands shook and his voice was brittle as he tried his best to say what he knew, to explain his existence to people who were watching him like he was a ghost.

It wasn’t much. A sob story of death and golden flowers, mostly. Lots of death. He left out some of it, but that didn’t make their expressions any lighter.

His parents stayed close by him throughout it, having already heard it from him in sobbing gulps, and he saw them close their eyes in sympathy when Alphys realised the part she’d had to play. She went ashen, her eyes immediately dropping to her feet, and he couldn’t ignore the resentful look Undyne sent his way.

He felt the relief and happiness cool to iciness in his chest as his words started to pull out people’s memories, lost since he’d done…well, whatever he’d done. And it had been him, then. He remembered that much. So it was his fault that they’d forgotten what the Other had done. It was his fault that their memories slid back, letting dismay and distrust cloud what should have been a happy reunion.

His parents didn’t blame him. It wasn’t him: it had all been the Other, he explained that as best he could without actually putting it into words. It was cowardly, he knew that, but it was one thing to take responsibility in front of Frisk and quite another thing to take responsibility in front of a crowd who’d all been wronged by him.

He left out a lot of the death.

When he was done, Alphys had to leave. She was shaking and couldn’t even get a quick apology out (he didn’t need it, he hadn’t wanted that!) without stumbling over her words. Undyne took her outside to go back home. Asgore went to the door with them, to see them off, and when he came back he hugged Asriel and told him everything was alright. It didn’t feel like that, but Asriel smiled hopefully.

In the end, it was Papyrus who asked what nobody had wanted to.

“So…do you know if Flowey can come back?” He clacked his fingers against his legs with a smile that looked like it was there more out of habit than anything else: a placeholder while he sorted through new information and unearthed memories.

“And where’s the kid?” his brother put in with just a twinge of a threat.

Asriel’s parents looked at each other and seemed to decide something. It was almost like old times.

“My child,” Toriel said, bending to his height, “I believe we all have a lot to think about after this turn of events. And you are tired, are you not? I can see you are trying to hide it.”

He hadn’t been, but he caught the hint, so he nodded and left the adults to talk.

There was talking he had to do too, anyway.

He managed to almost trip up twice on the stairs but figured that it was better he just pretended that that was him getting used to having a physical existence again. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t anxious. He wasn’t worried that Chara wasn’t going to be there when he opened the door, like they’d just been a dream.

That would be stupid.

They looked up when he slammed the door open and then immediately apologised for the sound, patting the door sheepishly. It didn’t look like they’d moved since the morning, and they didn’t look any better either. Deep bags seemed to have settled under their eyes in the space of a few hours, even though the Other’s memories helpfully pointed out that Frisk had never had dark circles in their life. He was still relieved to see them, and hopped up on the bed next to them, trying to ignore the resentment he could still feel coming from downstairs.

Skittishness oozed from them, so he started talking first. It was how the two of them did things.

“I explained it to the others, or at least, I explained what I understand. Which isn’t much,” he laughed. “They…um, they didn’t take it well, exactly, but I don’t think anyone is actually angry. Probably. I don’t know. I think mostly…mostly everyone’s just confused. I mean, it shouldn’t have happened, right? But here we are, haha…” He shuffled his feet nervously. “And then they were asking after Frisk.”

He aimed it as a question, or a prompt, or something to get Chara talking, and they flinched. Or maybe they flinched at Frisk’s name: he couldn’t tell. He waited anyway.

The sheets went taut between their hands, threatening to rip until he hurriedly put his own hands on theirs, trying to calm them.

As if he could.

But they let the sheets go and looked at him. “Do you really not know?” they asked, voice scratchy and hoarse.

“Know what?”

“Why we’re here.”

Asriel shook his head, scooting up further onto the bed and leaning against the windowsill. “Do you?”

They nodded.

“And…?” he asked hopefully.

Their face twisted. “Because Frisk’s an idiot who never fucking listens.”

“Oh.” He thought for a second. “Wait, you mean…”

“Of course I mean they sacrificed themself for you,” Chara spat, though it was pretty obvious that the venom wasn’t directed at him.

“Wait, no, that’s…they couldn’t have!” he wailed.

“Why not? They’re self-sacrificing enough,” they said it like it was the worst insult they could think of (a little hypocritical, if Asriel was honest). And then their face crumpled and they looked for all the world like a lost child. He wanted to hug them so badly.

“I tried,” they said, biting their lip, their knuckles stretched white. “I kept telling them not to, I kept telling them that no one would be happy with this but they never listened!” Their voice broke.

“You were with them,” Asriel realised slowly.

Chara nodded.

“All this time, you were with them?”

“Since they woke on the flowerbed. I…I tried to help, and then I tried to keep helping after they fixed everything but god, I was so tired. I’m so tired. I told them not to. I told them no one would be happy with this. I told them it was the worst idea they’d ever had. You think I can live their life for them?” Their mouth was wide in the mockery of a smile. “I never wanted to live at all.”

A protest rose and died in Asriel’s throat: they’d had this argument before. A lot. Too many times for him to be comfortable with it. He changed the subject instead.

“But…but Frisk shouldn’t have been able to do that with just their soul…” he mumbled, bringing his legs up to his chest and resting his chin on them.

Chara shrugged, somehow managing to make it look bitter. “They thought Flowey was close enough to getting yours back that he just needed a push.”

“Was that their plan all along? Was that why they went back to get…to get him?”

“Probably. They wouldn’t talk to me about it much. I thought they were just being their usual soft-hearted self, thinking they could make everyone happy. And then they got attached to him and it was easier for them to pretend they didn’t have a plan. I didn’t even work it out until a few weeks ago.”

Nothing was making sense. None of it sounded like Frisk at all.

“But…” Asriel gestured around, at a loss. “But…didn’t they like…him? Or…or me, or whatever he was?”

Chara looked at him sharply and it looked so out of place in Frisk’s body which had only been soft and careful before. He gulped.

“They liked him. They regretted it. But they were determined, of course they were. They tried to explain it to me a hundred times and none of it made sense to me, but…fuck, they just wanted to make everyone happy.” Their fingers grappled at their hair and they hunched up their shoulders with utter disregard for their spine’s wellbeing. “I don’t know how we can get them back.”

That made Asriel look up, as if the rest of the conversation hadn’t been awful enough. He cough-laughed, unsure of himself. “Get them back? We…we can’t, can we?”

“Of course we can. We should be able to. I don’t know how any of this actually works, but if they figured out how to get their soul in you, it shouldn’t be that difficult to get it out.”

Asriel’s mouth went dry. “Is that what you want? For me to…to go away again?”

Chara’s head snapped up and they twisted to face him, grabbing his hands in theirs and rubbing their thumbs in soothing circles, at odds with the hunted look on their face.

“No! Of course I don’t want that! That’s not what I want at all, but…Asriel, we shouldn’t be here.”

They were staring at him meaningfully, their eyes dragging him in and he so badly wanted to agree. He so badly wanted to say that it didn’t hurt, that they should both do their best and get Frisk back. He wanted to be a good person, but it was hopeless, he thought.

Maybe the Other had had control for too long: maybe that was why he couldn’t stomach the idea of letting go of everything he’d just been given back. Was that selfish? He wanted to live with his parents, he wanted to live with Chara, he wanted to live – not just sleep in the darkness, watching someone else’s life masquerading as his own. At best. At worst, he wouldn’t exist at all.

All the sensations around him (of smells and sounds and everything so physical that he could barely believe it) felt right, felt natural, and he didn’t want to let go of them either. He didn’t want to let go of Chara’s hands and watch them break before he could save them again.

But they didn’t understand.

Had he been stupid to think that they, of all people, would understand?

Everything he’d wanted was being ruined and he had no one to blame but himself, so he smiled and nodded and tried not to cry.

Chapter Text

‘We’re going to be together forever!’

It was the sort of thing that Asriel didn’t really like to remember he’d once said. It was bad enough that he’d said it (and meant it), did he really have to remember it as well? It felt like a joke.

But – even though he knew that, even though he had all the bitter perks of hindsight – he was still watching it all over again, in one of the many scenes from his childhood (as if he wasn’t still a child) that liked to come and pester him. And it was so much worse now.

Chara was smiling, in their way, teasing him relentlessly, as was also their way, and he was trying to get them to answer him seriously. The caves of Waterfall dripped all around them and he kept trying, kept prompting them to say that that was what they wanted too. To always be with him. To never let go. To never be as close with anyone else, ever, because they were all he needed so he had to be all they needed. That was how it was supposed to work.

He’d always been needy, hadn’t he? It was so embarrassing, he just felt relief when the image of the two children began to swim and break apart, ripped to blackness when he opened his eyes. And then he was him again. Just Asriel, in the present, white fur and flesh-body and all. Just him, but it was beginning to feel like he wasn’t enough anymore.

He sighed, barely enough to make a sound, and got up.

The days passed sluggishly, and while Asriel would have loved to say that he didn’t understand why, the truth of it was that he did. It was glaring, if he was honest. He’d have had to have been a very special kind of innocently-unaware-idiot to not see that nothing was working out the way he’d hoped it would, the way he’d assumed it would have had to work out. Wasn’t this the way things were supposed to be? His family was back together, so weren’t they supposed to live happily ever after now?

Apparently not.

Chara was spending their every waking moment reading. Not for any particular purpose, as far as Asriel could see: just because it meant they didn’t have to pay attention to the world. They’d speak if spoken to, they could be persuaded to eat and go in the garden, but that was all the leeway they had to give. Asriel had considered asking about it a few times, wondering if it was worth it to break through the walls Chara had very quickly set up between them (and while he’d accepted those too, because they came with Chara, he didn’t have to be happy about it), but it never came to anything. He wasn’t that brave. And anyway, after a few days of watching them jump at every car horn outside, cringe whenever the front door opened, curl up on themself whenever voices passed on the street, Asriel worked it out for himself.

He did try to help. He kept the bedroom curtains shut at all times, even if it turned the place gloomy. He talked to them to distract them if a human came round to talk to Toriel for whatever reason. He really did do his best, and that’s why it hurt as much as it did to find out that it was Asgore, not him, who managed to coax Chara outside for the first time since they’d come back.

“They’ve…gone out?” he repeated flatly.

Toriel nodded, smiling in a half-hearted way, like she was distracted by something. “Asgore suggested they might like to see his flower garden and they agreed.” She folded the tea towel she was holding, putting it away in a cupboard.

“Oh,” Asriel said, a little late. “Oh, okay.”

Nearly a week of everything being stubbornly and unchangingly wrong, constantly stewed in side glances and frowns telling him that it was all his fault, putting up with everyone’s disappointment in him (for existing: all he’d done was exist!), and now this. He could feel tears coming on and he wiped them away hurriedly with the sleeve of his shirt.

“Oh,” he mumbled again.

Almost instantly, Toriel was hugging him softly, crouched down so he could lean his chin on her shoulder and wrap his arms around her properly. “Oh, my child,” she said quietly, “I am sorry things are not the way they should have been.”

“I just…I know it’s stupid, it’s just a small thing, but…” his hands flapped uselessly at her back, trying to sum up why he was so stupidly upset, but coming up with nothing. “I just wanted us to be happy…”

“I know,” she hummed back, making soothing noises as she picked him up (he was still small enough, just like old times) and took him out of the kitchen to the living room, where everything was soft and fluffy and warm and he could nuzzle into her side and have a good cry. Maybe two good cries. As many as it took, really: he gave up counting.

When he felt a little more monster and a little less dripping puddle of tears, he snuffled and sat up. His mother’s arm was still warm around his waist and she smiled down at him.

“Do you feel better?”

He nodded, not quite trusting his voice so soon.

Hers was almost as brittle as he was afraid his would be, though. “I am sorry things are not the way you expected.”

Shaking his head vigorously, he sniffed loudly again. “No…no, Mum, it’s not your fault…it’s just…”

“It is difficult, for all of us, and for that I truly am sorry. I could not be happier to have you back, my son, but…”

“You lost a child at the same time,” he finished for her miserably. “And…and I know you and Dad can’t go back to how you were, I…I get it, really I do. I just sort of…I knew that they’d miss Frisk and…and Flowey too, I guess, but it feels like everyone resents me for it. Even Chara. They won’t even talk to me. Like they think that not including me will make it easier for me or something. But I don’t know! I don’t know what’s going through their head: I don’t get it at all…And no matter what I do, they avoid me.”

They hadn’t stopped trying to get Frisk back, either: he wasn’t stupid enough to think they’d let that go so easily.

“And…” he bit his lip, chewing it with the nubs of his still-immature incisors, “what I really don’t get is…I mean, was I stupid for thinking people would prefer me now to…before? To the Other, to Flowey, to when I did all those horrible things? I hurt so many people, Mum – he hurt so many people, but apart from you and Dad, it’s like they all want him instead.”

Toriel turned and hugged him tighter, until he could barely breathe, but he thought that might be alright. It was worth it to not feel anything but her.

“Nobody wants you to go, my child! If we have any reservations, it is because of what we have lost, not what we have gained, and I am so, so sorry that those reservations are hurting you.” Her voice went light and broken, and she swallowed heavily. Parents didn’t cry, except on very, very special occasions. “I am sorry we cannot do better for you.”

He nodded into her shoulder, wishing that he didn’t feel like he had to comfort her now. Wishing that there was anything she could say that would make him feel better, but it felt like there was only one person who could make him feel better – truly better – and they weren’t talking to him. He kept nodding as prickly tears came back to the corners of his eyes.

“Asriel, I do not want to lose you ever again.” She bit the words fiercely into the air beside his ear, holding him even tighter as if that might distract him from how tears were colouring her voice as well.

“I know, Mum.”

There was everything left to say. It would be the perfect time to bring up the Other finally, since he’d been avoiding talking about him and what he’d done as much as possible. It would be the perfect time to discuss the future: what he was supposed to do, how he was supposed to fit in now. It would be the perfect time to do some productive brainstorming for ideas to help him get settled in better than the aimless and boring days he’d been watching pass by.

From somewhere else in the house, a machine began to beep distantly, like a cue to go back to everyday things and leave behind all of the feelings he didn’t want. Toriel collected herself, taking his hand and smiling strongly. “Shall we go and see if there is any pie left?” she asked – not too cheerily, not too brokenly, but enough to convince him she was fine now.

Before he’d scraped up the courage to say anything else, the moment had passed.

It took Asriel all evening until he had the nerve to say anything – through a quiet but comfortable dinner with the four of them, through washing up with his father while Toriel got Chara to help with her knitting, through Asgore leaving and he and Chara going up to get ready for bed.

“Was it nice? Going to Dad’s, I mean,” he said nonchalantly, doodling mindlessly on an old notebook. The ridges of the chest of drawers dug into his back and the radiator was just too hot by his side, but he couldn’t be bothered to move.

Chara looked up from where they were reading on the bed. “Yeah,” they nodded, turning back to the book.

Asriel ground his pen into the page.

“Um, Chara? You know, if you’re…” he tried to keep his voice steady but it just ended up an octave too high. “If you’re trying to, I don’t know, make me feel really unwelcome or something so that I’ll give up and help you get Frisk back, I’d prefer you were a little more straightforward about it.”

When he thought he could, he looked up and saw raw, rigid panic on their face. He wanted to sigh (or scream a little) but he knew that would just make it worse. Experience always was a good teacher.

But he wasn’t about to give in either: they’d hurt him, so they could stand a little shaking up for now, even if it…even if their shaking hands and open-mouthed breaths made him want to run and hold their head in his hands, tell them everything was fine. Do their breathing exercises with them and reassure them. But that would be giving in, wouldn’t it?

“That’s not…that’s not what I meant…” they choked.

Maybe giving in wouldn’t be so bad.

He laughed lightly, the paper under his hands now covered in black spirals. “It’s okay, Chara! It’s really okay, so, um…what did you mean? Because everything’s fine, really, but I sort of…You haven’t exactly been talking to me lately. You know?”

To his relief, they were showing every well-worn sign of calming down. He settled back against the uncomfortable wooden drawers and waited.

“I just didn’t want to make it harder on you,” they eventually came out with.

“Make it harder on me? Why would you be doing that?”

“I mean, by asking you to…By getting you involved in…” They scowled at their hands, fidgeting and squirming.

“Getting Frisk back?” he suggested.

They nodded.

“Do you even still think you can?” he said, smiling because it was easier that way. “I mean, we don’t know how they pulled off disappearing, right? So…” he trailed off, suddenly feeling like he was drowning in Chara’s expression. They’d never frowned at him like that before.

“Are you happy to have them stay dead?” they asked.

“What? No, of course I’m not!”

Confusion clouded their face. “They saved you, they saved all of us, but you-”

“Chara, that’s not what this is! I’m grateful to them, I really, really am! I care about them – I can never thank them enough!”

“But not enough to get them back?” There was so little venom in the words that should have been soaked in it that Asriel felt thrown off course. “They only managed to get you back because you came to love them.”

“Because he came to love them!” Asriel shouted, the paper crumpled under his claws. “He’s not me, okay?! We’re not different but we’re not the same and I don’t feel what he did: I can love, I can feel sympathy and compassion and all the rest of it, but he couldn’t, you know that! And I do love them, I do, but Chara, I’m scared! It’s them and him or me and you and I’m terrified because I know what I want to choose. And maybe you can’t understand: maybe it’s so easy for you because you don’t want to exist here at all, but I’m not like that! I’m not…I just want to live with my family.”

He didn’t bother to look at them: not when he heard the creaks of the bed, not when he heard the padding of their feet on the carpet, not when he felt their hand on his arm. He sniffed heavily, refusing to look at them even though this was everything he’d wanted.

He was so, so horrible, and he knew it.

“I’m sorry,” Chara said, and he felt even worse for making them apologise. Ignoring the urge to tell them they didn’t have to, he buried his head further into his arms.

“Asriel…you know I don’t want you to go away again, don’t you?”

He mumbled a non-committal sound.

“And maybe you’re right,” they said, their voice too forced. “It certainly wouldn’t be wrong to say that I’m not happy here, but I’m not just trying to get them back so I don’t have to deal with this world anymore.”

“I never thought that!” Asriel burst up again, horrified that they could have thought that of him.

They seemed too focussed on following some internal script to reassure him more than a squeeze of his arm. “I’ll think of something else,” they said brightly. “I’ll work at it and I’ll come up with a better solution, and I’ll get them back, I promise.”

They were offering him a future that was barred to them, and they knew it just as well as he did, but he couldn’t refuse. Nodding, smiling, he took their hand in his and was slightly gratified to see them relax. Just a bit.

“I want them back too, you know,” he said in a small voice he hoped sounded cheerful enough. “I do, it’s just that I haven’t been living with them for the past year or however long it’s been.”

“That’s okay!” Still cheery. Still bright. Then their face dropped into something that looked almost normal. “But understand that I need them back, please?”

He couldn’t say no to them when they asked him like that (he could barely say no to them at the best of times). Nothing was very much better than it had been before – nothing had really changed, anyway – but Chara was smiling at him naturally, like they knew what to do and he just had to follow their lead, and he couldn’t say no to that. A smile blossomed on his face. He felt like a sentimental idiot about it, but, whether they were the greatest person or not, Chara being on his side made all the difference.

Even if he doubted that that would be enough.

Chapter Text

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Asriel was grateful for Papyrus’ unbreakable cheerfulness.

“It’s nice to meet you, Chara!” he said, and you could actually believe he meant it. Beside his brother, Sans grunted, distrust written into every inch of his stiff smile.

Standing the right distance away, holding Asriel’s hand tight enough that he couldn’t stop smiling, Chara nodded. “It’s nice to meet you in person,” they mumbled, ducking their head once they’d done their social duty.

“Toriel told me you like to knit!” Papyrus continued, undaunted. “What excellent luck! Great though I am, I have to admit that my crochet is not exactly exemplary. Perhaps you could show me how you do it!”

Toriel had suggested it, and she’d been onto something, clearly: Chara nodded again and let themself be led into the living room. Before the meeting, Toriel had suggested a lot of things. Some had been more warnings than suggestions. Some had been requests.

‘Do not take your frustration out on them. They are just a child. They did not want this.’

That was fine for one brother, but just not good enough for the other. Promise fulfilled, Sans was gone before Asriel could notice anything. He should have expected that, really. And he didn’t exactly mind: Sans would have to come around eventually, if this lasted.

‘If’.

Shaking his head as if that would clear it, he went to sit with the other two. Papyrus was excitedly comparing needle sizes and suggesting different knits; Chara silently pointed to the ones they liked. Asriel sat across from them, curled up on a sofa by himself, and picked up a magazine he had no intention of reading. The room was too warm: it was one of those spring days that felt too much like summer, with a high sun and skies as blue as the day was long. The day before had been drizzle and overcast, so he wasn’t exactly holding out for anything.

Sunlight warming his back just on the right side of uncomfortable, he flipped pages and listened to the other two. He didn’t really understand anything about knitting, but he did understand the determination of one-sided conversations. Too well, perhaps. He could appreciate how hard Papyrus was trying.

Was it trying, for him? Maybe it was natural. Maybe some people found it easy, to just talk and talk and not get any feedback from it. Maybe some people could do all the work to patch together what was broken and still not feel like they were unwanted.

Asriel forced himself to breathe out and unclench the glossy pages in his hands. He wasn’t like that. There were so many things he needed to think about and decide: how to build bridges with Alphys, how to help Chara with the human world, what to do about school, about his future…Something in his chest clenched up coldly. There were so many variables. So many things he had to do. All the effort he’d have to put in, when he still barely had his bearings. It still felt weird, sometimes, when he woke up and saw everything differently.

A string of never-ending Things To Do faced him and it was enough of a struggle just adapting again. He turned back to the start of the magazine and started reading it, properly this time.

“Fascinating!” Papyrus was cooing over everything Chara showed him. They didn’t seem either happy or uncomfortable with his attentions, so Asriel didn’t step in. It was good news: he knew that. It had been difficult enough getting them to agree to meet the others (‘Why should I when I’m not planning on sticking around?’), he wasn’t sure what he’d have done if the meeting hadn’t gone well. So that was good. He was going to count it as a victory.

Despite his best intentions to keep listening to them, make sure they were getting along, he actually got invested in the magazine after a while. It wasn’t like the economic digests Toriel left around: even if he’d had the general knowledge, he wouldn’t have been able to understand those. Food magazines were so much easier. Just recipes and pictures and thought pieces from people obsessed with having ‘natural’ food, whatever that was. He doubted it was the opposite of monster food. It seemed a bit early for that sort of distinction to be made, even if it had been a year.

It caught him off guard when Papyrus hopped up, thanked Chara and made for the door. They didn’t look so surprised – a little more relaxed, though, twirling hooked needles in their fingers – so he’d probably missed something.

“Was that okay?” he asked as innocently as he could.

The needles froze in their hands. They made a small noise of agreement. “It wasn’t bad. Frisk likes him a lot, they talk to him a lot, so I’m used to him.”

Another clench in his chest, but he was more familiar with this one and managed to smile it off. “That’s good.”

“Don’t…please. Don’t pretend I can stay.” They wouldn’t look at him.

By that point, he knew better than to argue. They had too many counter-arguments and he could never stand to do it anyway. “Okay,” he said cheerfully enough. “I just want to make sure you’re comfortable.”

“I’m sorry.” They still wouldn’t look at him, curled up into their apologies and guilt like it was air for them. Sometimes it was. If it hadn’t been poison for him, he’d have stayed with them, but things being the way they were, he left with just a squeeze of their hand and a hope that space would help them.

It had been weeks and it hadn’t helped yet, but he could hope, even if no hopes or dreams would be enough if they refused to be helped.

“They still want Frisk back, don’t they? Sans, Undyne, everyone.”

His father looked at him with the sad expression that never seemed to leave him nowadays. Logically, Asriel knew he wasn’t the reason (and it was probably arrogant to think he was), but that didn’t stop it from hurting a little. He was getting better at ignoring that, though. He curled up his toes a little tighter in the armchair.

Asgore took a few moments to answer, probably running through excuses in his head, eventually just saying, “Yes. Your mother and I have not yet been able to tell them that the process may not be reversible. Even if it is, we would not send Chara back.”

“You wouldn’t need to: they want to go.”

“It is difficult for them here, far more so than for even you,” he said kindly, making sure to be fair where he could. And that was all well and good, and Asriel appreciated it in a half-hearted way, but it wasn’t really what he needed to hear. He knew that already. They’d told him that so many times.

“I don’t hold it against them,” he said, because he knew it would make his father happy to hear it. That’s how young princes were supposed to feel, even if he wasn’t a prince anymore.

“Do you hold it against the others?”

“Should I?”

It was a cold way to brush off the question and he knew it; Asgore knew it as well, but he just waited and opened his arms. Never one to ignore a hug, Asriel climbed up into his armchair and rested against his side.

“I don’t know. Yes? I think.” It had been some time since he’d cried about it in his mother’s arms: he wouldn’t cry now. “It’ll get better. So I’m just waiting for that.”

“That is wise of you, far more so than I would ever choose to ask of you.”

“I know, Dad. Thanks.”

He snuggled into his father’s side and closed his eyes, pretending to try for sleep. It was unfair, he thought, but he’d been thinking that for a long time. This wasn’t how things were supposed to work. He was supposed to have his happy ending, he was sure, and he was just as sure that that was what Frisk had sacrificed themself for, but it hadn’t been right. Clearly. So he couldn’t even honour their memory, which just left one outcome he could see.

If it’s not working, throw it away.

It was late afternoon when he heard the door click open. He was there before Chara had managed to close it, his hand on theirs, his eyes on theirs. It had been a month.

“Where are you going?”

They looked down. “You know.”

“I don’t.”

“You know why I’m going.”

He couldn’t very well deny that.

They sighed, looked at the pavement, skirted their gaze along the door and then back to him. Their fingers tensed a little under his. “Come with me?”

Nothing on Earth or beneath it could have stopped him going with them, even with the roiling fear in his gut at how nervous they looked. So he nodded and went back to slip on his shoes, then followed them out of the door. Neither thought to leave a note.

After a minute or two of silent walking, their hands swinging just close enough to touch, they turned from the road into a side path that led to the park. There was virtually no one around – certainly no one within hearing distance. Asriel guessed that not going to work or school had some advantages. As dark brown brick changed to low fences and finally bushes, he looked at Chara. They were biting their lip, their eyes flitting back and forth, so he knew he had to put them out of their misery – take the first step like he always did.

“You figured out how to bring them back?”

They shivered and he pretended not to notice, but he did stretch out to take their hand. They squeezed back.

“Maybe. I don’t know. But I decided.”

“To sacrifice yourself back for them?”

“Yeah.”

There was a gust of harsh wind, making the blood in his nose spike with pain. That was the reason he’d give for his eyes watering, if they asked. “That’s a pretty big decision to make.”

“I’ve made it before.”

“Mm.”

They passed flower beds filled with brittle-looking branches and not-quite-open buds. Rather than heading through into the forest, they took a smaller path round its side, pressed up against the artificial lake.

“Can…can I do it too?”

They looked at him sharply, drawn to a stop so quickly that he thought they were going to trip. He didn’t think he’d had their undivided attention like this since they’d both appeared.

“Why would you want to?” they breathed, and that was all it took. Everything was too hot: his eyes, his nose, his throat, burning up and spiking him with pain and he had to suck in a few breaths before he could even try to answer.

“I don’t want to!” It came out too much like a wail, so he concentrated on calming himself down as Chara led him to a bench. There was no one around and he was grateful for it, so, so grateful.

“I don’t want to,” he repeated, mumbling. “I don’t…I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to die again. I don’t want to throw away a future here! I don’t want to throw away what Frisk tried so hard to give us! I don’t want to die, Chara, but it’s them and him or you and me. I’m not letting you go without me!”

They watched him, eyes burning with things they wouldn’t say. “That’s a terrible reason.”

The threat of tears dissolved into laughter. “I know! It’s awful, isn’t it? But I need one. Otherwise isn’t it just cowardice? I keep…I keep thinking about what’s going to happen here and I don’t like it. What if it never gets better? What if this is how it’s going to be, and I just keep hanging on because there are a few people who like me and who want me around, because I’m holding onto the hope that things will change? What if you go, and nothing happens? What if I’m left totally alone after that? I can’t do it on my own, Chara: it’s with you, or it’s never. And Frisk…they need to come back. Weighing it up, there’s not really any other solution, is there?”

Chara nodded, holding his hand against the splintering wood of the bench.

“I’m not supposed to be here. Maybe I could belong here, but I don’t think I can without Frisk. They belong here more than I do. They shouldn’t have sacrificed themself: that wasn’t their place, it wasn’t something they should ever have felt like they had to do. So I know what the best option is, and it’s going back to how it was. But I’m so scared!”

Chara was still nodding, still holding his hand tightly to theirs, and they slipped off the bench, pulling him with them. He went without thinking of resisting.

“I don’t want to think about it, Chara. I don’t want to think about how Mum and Dad are going to feel. What if it doesn’t work and they just find us? I don’t want them to mourn us again, I don’t want to lose my family again, I don’t…I don’t want to turn into some heartless flower again…!”

They lift their free hand to his face, wiping tears away with their sleeve.

“He wasn’t heartless. He was getting there. Frisk was working with him.”

Asriel laughed again, a little more from disbelief this time. “Do you honestly believe that? I couldn’t feel anything from him, Chara, not from the memories I have.”

“I could see it; so could they. But I don’t know either. I’m…I’m not going to force you to do it with me. I’m not going to try and convince you.”

He wanted to shout at them that the very fact that they were doing it was worth more than a hundred speeches, but he couldn’t. They never seemed to understand that about him. Or maybe they did: maybe they used it, but whichever it was, he couldn’t let himself think about it now. They walked together, feeling the milky-white sun shine on them, listening to far-away birdsong.

Asriel didn’t think he recognised where they were, but he didn’t much care. He had too much to think about, but there were no right answers. Would he regret it? Undoubtedly. Would he regret it if he didn’t do it? Also undoubtedly. He wished he had Chara’s resolve, but even that scared him. It always had. They were never open to other ideas once they’d set their own in place.

So wasn’t this just him going along with their whims? Shouldn’t he turn back? Wasn’t this just the same as before? Hadn’t he learnt anything?

“You’re having second thoughts, aren’t you?” Chara brought him to a stop, sitting down, and he followed their lead.

Words bubbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. “I’m scared, Chara!”

They tried to comfort him: they were awful at words, he knew that, so they kept their hand on his and stroked the side of his face with the other, staring at him. He cried a little – barely enough to count, really. He dug his fingers into the loose earth and flowers they sat on. He thought feverishly, but there wasn’t really much point to it. He already knew what he was going to do: he’d known when he’d left the house with them, he thought.

“I’m not ready to leave,” he whispered, because it didn’t feel like he should say the words any louder.

“I’m not going to force you.”

It would have been better if they had: at least then he could have blamed them (as if he ever would have done that).

“This is for the best, isn’t it?”

They nodded. “I think so.”

They were both so young. They’d got things wrong before: what if they were getting this wrong as well? But was there a way to not do this wrong? Apart from miracles (and they’d both lived through enough of those), he didn’t think so. It was selfish to keep things like this, he told himself. He told himself a thousand other things, trying to convince and dissuade himself, and all the while Chara waited for him, leaning their shoulder against his, curling their legs up in the greenery.

The sun set, and still no one passed by them. Clouds hung low in the sky, catching the last of the light, and soon enough lamps burst into light across the park, but nowhere near them. Asriel’s cheeks felt stiff with tears dried into his fur, and finally, without any cue, he looked at Chara.

“Are you ready?” they asked.

“I’m tired.”

They inclined their head. “We can sleep.”

His mind was already made up anyway: it didn’t make much difference. Each as decided as the other, the two children lay down and fell asleep on the bed of golden flowers.

*

‘…nng? Where…?’

‘Back where you belong, you absolute first class idiot.’

‘Chara?’

‘Were you expecting someone else?’

‘Wait…didn’t it…didn’t it work?’

‘No, it worked, and you and I are going to have words about planning things together and asking advice and not being a self-imposed martyr in the future, but I’ll leave that for when you’re a little more conscious.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

Frisk rubbed their eyes, levering themself up on one arm. Their body felt weird: shakier, somehow, maybe thinner? How long had they been out? Or away, or unconscious, or whatever it had been. They might have been dead, they supposed: weirder things had happened.

That reminded them and they jolted up properly, looking around. Sure enough, a cartoonishly big flower was next to them, rooted into the earth and apparently lifeless. His petals were just as unnecessarily big and soft as they remembered. Guilt stabbed through them again, and Chara didn’t miss it.

‘You know you essentially sacrificed him.’

‘…yeah.’

‘Did you want to?’

‘No.’

‘Are these all going to be monosyllabic answers or are you actually going to be helpful?’

Frisk shrugged and was promptly hit by a wave of irritation from Chara. They ignored it: they’d had plenty worse from them.

‘He’s alive, right?’

‘How the hell should I know? I don’t even know how we got you back.’

Which brought up another sticky subject.

‘Asriel.’

‘Yeah.’

Frisk considered asking one of the questions tumbling through their mind, but the hurt in Chara’s voice warned them against it. There would be time for that later, probably. A whole lifetime, if they never managed to send Chara on. But that was a problem for another time as well. Now they just had to wait and see how the pieces had fallen before they figured out what move to make next.

Still, they held their hands together as if holding Chara’s, sending as much warmth as they could. ‘I’m glad I get to speak to you again.’

Chara snorted. ‘Yeah, well. Maybe don’t go sacrificing yourself thoughtlessly next time.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Liar.’

That was fair, Frisk thought. They settled down more comfortably to see what Flowey was going to do.

Flowey felt like he could quite cheerfully commit first degree murder. The memories were plunging through him, ripping him apart to make up for lost time, and he hadn’t felt this absolutely awful since…well, it probably didn’t bear remembering. He sure wasn’t going to. He was having enough of memories as it was.

But even as they forced their way back to him, even as he had his eyes peeled open to what had happened, he could feel someone else.

When things had finally died down, he thought he might as well get it over with.

“I know you’re there.”

There wasn’t an answer, because this wasn’t like what Frisk and Chara apparently had. There weren’t two people. There was one very confused one, and it stung to know that he was only a part of that. What, he couldn’t even be his own person now? He had to share with the stupid, perfect prince he’d never be again? Disgusting.

“You’re not coming back.”

He was talking to himself, of course, but he’d hit worse lows in the past.

With consciousness taking its sweet time flowing back to him so he couldn’t actually open his eyes and start to take his anger out on someone yet, he was getting impatient. This was terrible. The whole thing was terrible. He couldn’t even imagine what he was going to have to deal with when he made it back home. Frisk was probably going to get off with a pout and their doe-eyes, and then he’d be blamed for everything, it was going to be the worst.

Well. Not worse than never coming back, probably. He still had things he wanted to do. There were still promises he wanted to keep, people he wanted to see, all that rubbish.

So he wanted to stay. Whatever his little prince-self wanted.

Slowly, but with a vengeance, Flowey opened his eyes.